The Road To Haven
by SpaceAnJL
Summary: A new WytchAnJL chapter - the crew are seeing things. Not all of it is good, not all of it is real, and some of it is very strange indeed.
1. No Maps For These Territories

**The Road to Haven**

This story is set just after Those Left Behind. It is also a collaboration. See, this isn't just a SpaceAnJl fic, it's also the work of another FF author, by the name of Wytchcroft. Only, since they don't have a shiny account, I get to post it up here, and they get to post over at .

So, we present...a WytchAnJL production. I mean, most of it belongs to Joss Whedon, but there are some bits I don't think he'd want to claim responsibility for. This first chpater is pretty much all Wytchfic, but later, you can have fun trying to spot the joins.

_Chapter one: No Maps for These Territories_

Something comforting there is - and always - in the book, the Book - THE Book.  
No need even to open the battered softened pages - just the feel of the leather binding, the resin-like smell absorbed over years; sweat, dirt, his own body's musk - the luxury of an infrequent aftershave, heat. All the different perfumes of emotion contained therein, in the Book. THE Book. His Book. His Bible.

All the secrets there, without even opening the cover…

But the book _is_ open.

Some folk might smile at an irony - the Shepherd feels only a wave of sadness.

But then, what he is doing, as he sits in the cupboard that serves as a cabin - leaning awkwardly forward as he perches by the narrow reading shelf - what he is doing... well – there are many would call it sinful.

He is reading - his tired eyes wide and intent - scanning the words, scanning the lines, scanning the pages - and the edges of the adhesive tape used to repair them.

The Bible had been... damaged - had been attacked deliberately but uncomprehendingly - the attacker and the act fused into one - damaged... yes.

Trying to 'fix' the Bible, the child had said - tearing into Book's precious papers.

For the longest time, Shepherd Book had thought only of the damage - that the girl _was_ damage. Over time however, he has changed this view - she changed it for him. It was more than just damage... Book knows the Alliance well enough to believe Simon when he calls his sister's condition deliberate - and well enough to know that there might be madness in the method - but method nonetheless. River - 'gifted' certainly, but with what? Sight perhaps... True sight. Captain Malcolm Reynolds calls the girl a 'reader'. How very apt.

But Shepherd Book is the one reading now - divining meaning from the reconstructed syntax - the re/ordered language - the fresh wording of his accidentally transformed Bible.

He reads:

_"By -- Rivers... I give to you a new H-aven... We wept... We Remembered."_

Is it sin - to see the stars from the bottom of so deep a well? The Southdown Abbey had frowned and with good reason at this, this - _this way lies madness, _thinks Shepherd Book, with a sigh. But surely also this way holds wonder - has meaning - a real truth in the power of the new associations, the random couplings of vowels and consonant. This way might give direction... and Shepherd Book craves direction... a way through the fog.

_I've tried… and I am tired… _Book can't remember the last time he felt truly rested… and he _has_ tried… The Southdown Abbey… but that didn't work out – was far from restful, seeing as how –

_Concentrate! _

Sin.

If sin - there is no/one to whom he might confess - the familiar gentle hand upon his brow, the reassuring voice, the rustle of fabric, the gift of relief. No, there is no/one - the Companion is gone, the woman has left - he has no/one now to turn to...

_So, what - you turn inward now?_ The Shepherd rages at himself. _You turn to this near madness? Using Holy Writ for personal divination? Reading what you will into the broken phrases - that is perversion!_

Another sigh…

_The least of my sins then... The least of my crimes._

…and another.

_And I am meant to be leaving too...  
_

He turns for a moment away from the lure of the page - catching sight of his face in the small mirror screwed into the clothing locker. _Look now! _

The strain, the lines of exhaustion etched like charcoal into the fine boned features, the troubled eyes - their guilty look.

_If I feel guilty - it is because I am also comforted._ - and the face in the mirror looks suddenly resolute. _If I am comforted then I have received mercy, the Lord - not the Devil - has touched me here. The Lord lives in these words..._

He turns back to read them anew.

_"By -- Rivers... I give to you a new H-aven... We wept... We Remembered."_

By Rivers...

_..._

"Bony… Mmm…" Simon Tam considers this, looking with interest at his forearm, his elbow. "I suppose I am..."

He feels his sister nod agreement - but then it had been River that pointed out the fact. They are lying together on the pallet that serves as her bed, on top of the crumpled orange blanket. They can spend hours in such a way, with ease. They would be at ease - normally. But then,

"You don't normally complain." Simon points out. River is probably right though - rations onboard the ship being what they are - especially now that Shepherd Book has given up helping in the mess, since Inara's departure. But then the Shepherd has also announced his desire to go. Simon is unsettled by the sudden whittling down of the passenger-crew. With the Shepherd gone, he suspects, time will follow rapidly on that River and himself would be cut adrift...

River is still nodding eagerly meanwhile and rubbing that part of her side Simon has supposedly offended.

"Bony," she says. Then sticks out her tongue - a childish habit - Simon hasn't seen her do it for a while and he cherishes the mannerism. "Bony", River says once more as Simon looks at her, "And sulking."

...

"I'm not sulking!" Malcolm Reynolds sounds hurt by the accusation. His first mate regards him from across the dining table with scepticism - but worse is the elaborate display of faux-sympathy on the expressive features of his pilot. Wash's eyes, nose and mouth are dancing around together like children playing ring o' ring o' roses .

And so the Captain scowls with intent, the low lighting chiselling his features with shadow. "How many times do I have to - I ain't sore at Inara for leaving - and it don't matter to me I got hit by the Preacher." That much is true at least; if anything, Mal sounds childishly pleased.

Wash grins. "Because locking him in his cabin was... tell me again about the locking in, Captain. I'm sure you meant well..."

"Just figured he might wanna keep out my way for a spell - I was being helpful."

"Oh yeh sure - that's our Captain, always with the helpful."

Real fire blazes then in the Captain's eyes. Wash just grins the louder - but he's looking rigidly at the Captain - carefully not looking at his wife. _One of these days husband dear, you'll go too far._ - Wash doesn't have to see her to know Zoë's mind - _Ain't looking to be a widow just yet._

Reynolds has kept up the glare. "Ain't you s'posed to be the one flies my boat?"

But Wash shrugs.

"Since you put it that way..." The sarcasm is lost on Mal, who remains unaware of his own often eccentric turns of phrase, "I guess I am." Wash shrugs again - to hide another attack of the wide and smilings - and rises from his seat to head on up to the flight deck.

Reynolds looks happier now - cramming a last piece of protein cake into his mouth. "You know..." he says slowly, "one of these days we're gonna get caught."

It's Zoë's turn to nod.

"Yes sir," she says. "Criminals that we are," she tidies her cutlery onto a plate, "we are also weak."

Mal knows the truth of this.

"Still," he says - and belches, "they don't seem to have found us out yet." He joins Zoë in clearing away the debris of their covert late night feast.

...

Mal is coming out of the galley when he hears the hollow ringing sound of something metallic strike the hull, a few seconds later and there's another noise - like gravel being flung at a window. He dives down the nearest access way to a comm. point.

"Talk to me Wash."

"Uh - hi, Captain... We, uh, the ship seems to be..." a louder thud - another scraping noise.

_"Wash!"_

"Sorry Mal - you might wanna see this for yourself - I think we're in a junk-field."

Shaking his head furiously, Reynolds heads for the flight deck, his ears straining to hear any more unnatural sounds from the hull.

He damn near collides with Jayne Cobb as the man stumbles dazedly out from his bunk and out from his room - swearing.

The Captain opens his mouth to say something to the big man but is cut off by a teeth grinding screech - as if metal claws are raking Serenity's wings. Cobb says nothing - but his face turns an unpleasant green colour and he sprints away from Mal and down to the engine room.

Reynolds too moves at speed, grabbing the stair rails and ladder rails and climbing up to the cockpit, surprised - if not overly pleased - to find Wash looking relaxed enough in the well worn cushioning of the pilot's seat and gesturing with his arms.

The cockpit windows reveal a slow moving star field - for a moment nothing more - and then a rain of tiny metal fragments come down upon them, scattering and bouncing and back into the void.

Staring out - Reynolds agrees with his pilot. Sure looks like a junk field out there - a Sargasso Sea of twisted metal and plastic. No pieces large enough to scavenge - nor damage the ship, he hopes.

Another clang - this time followed by an ominous sounding rattle.

"What was...?" But Mal doesn't bother to finish, flicking the comm. switch to the engine room, he hollers for Kaylee.

His mechanic is reassuring.

"Not to fret, Cap'tn," comes her lively voice, "'S'all shiny down here. Primary buffer panel got jiggled is all."

But Mal ain't liking the sound of that, turns to Wash with an alarmed eyebrow - his pilot is still sitting back expansively in the padded chair, hands behind his head. Realising that Reynolds looks expectant, Wash says,

"Kaylee's right - nothing serious here. No way that buffer's coming loose."

"Well... fine." Mal still ain't convinced - that panel, they need it – can't so much as graze atmo' without.

As if to confirm his worst thoughts, there's a sudden beeping from the console in front of Wash.

"What we got now?"

Wash clicks switches with a studied casualness - and Mal pretends not to hear the audible sigh of relief.

"Just a Wave", says the pilot. "You wanna hear?"

Reynolds gives the uh-huh and Wash turns the speakers on - unleashing a burst of static and an angry sounding deluge of coarse Chinese. Mal frowns but he can only make out a few words at the end of the message. "...So you value your hides - quit bothering me and back off!"

With a shake of the head, Mal leans over to look at the screen. "We got a caller ID?" he asks.

"Uh... yeah," Wash flips more switches. "Wave's probably a beacon loop most likely - it's repeating already... The ID is a - J.D. Noakes." Wash frowns at his own words and looks up at Mal. "That old timer?" the pilot sounds disbelieving, "He's still - he's not dead already? Noakes, really?"

Mal ain't sure.

"Always figured that was one cheroot got smoked a ways back. Could be I was wrong", he adds thoughtfully, listening to the message again, whiskey and sandpaper. "Sounds like him alright." Another rain of metal and Mal tenses instantly, "Just get us out of this", he says through gritted teeth. Wash pulls up on the steering firing the manoeuvring thrusters as he does so. Serenity spirals along the edges of the flotsam they've blundered into. "I feel like a bug in a basin."

Wash does not reply - he's analysing something, "Got a fix, maybe. Mal - you want for me to lock on it?"

"Uh-huh."

Serenity levels out again and, with a quick burn, heads towards the source of the wave.

"Trouble Captain?"

Mal is surprised by the voice - low and unflustered as it is – as Book enters the flight area.

"No, Shepherd - nothing I'd call 'trouble'. Just..."

"Annoying?"

"You could say that."

"Ladies," interrupts Wash, "I could listen to you all night but..." The two 'ladies' in question turn to Serenity's pilot and he gives them his best shit-eating grin. "We're up close to the signal."

"We parked?"

"Good as."

Reynolds pulls a headphone from a wall socket - the better to listen to the beacon relay. Shepherd Book meantime looks down at the data on Wash's screen.

"Noakes..." he murmurs, "You know him?"

"A little", answers Wash, "a mean old man..." Wash can't resist. "Helluva nose though - worked as a guide, gold mines and such - minerals, salvage jobs, lost weapons - you name it - time was that Noakes would get there first - or be helping them as were."

Book absorbs the information - whilst carefully watching Mal.

"Not good humoured then?"

"Most assuredly not, Preacher," This is Reynolds answering directly, before looking across at Wash.

"You thinking Noakes himself is around here someplace?" asks the pilot and Mal nods,

"Could be."

Wash is about to make with the shrugging but Book points a finger at the scope, a blip among the blur of the field.

"Isn't that a little over sized for a Beacon?"

"Well," a distracted Wash considers, "Could be mostly echo - some of the other fragments - dense enough... but - could be some kinda base..." The pilot looks at his Captain. "You wanna see?"

Mal puts the headphone back on its mount, ears still ringing with Chinese curses,

"Yeah, why not? Let's pay the old fella a visit - could be he might have a lead or two worth chasing for the salvage. We could be lucky."

"For a change," adds Wash.

"For a change," agrees the Captain.

Shepherd Book is gazing out the windows at the black and silver.

"That looks like deep thought Shepherd." Wash doesn't have a penny - but he's curious anyway.

"Hmm? Oh - yes." The Shepherd is talking to Mal though. "If you don't mind Captain, I'd like to come along if we do visit. A man alone out here - might appreciate hearing some Good News."

Mal looks bleak - but he says, "Sure, we all got our jobs to do. Just... keep out of the way."

Wash raises an eyebrow.

"What?" demands Mal.

Wash coughs but doesn't elaborate - instead he gets real busy with the steering, bringing round for a full view of whatever is waving at them.

...

The Exo-Platform hangs in space like a broken corkscrew stuck in a bottle of black glass. Between the twists of metal a small EVA-suited figure can be seen waving and jumping.

"That's nice," says Wash. "Our guy's happy to see us."

A scudding sound off the cock-pit window - "So happy," Wash drawls on, "that he's SHOOTING at us!" There's a resolute sound of panic in his voice.

Another noise - another shot.

"I don't get it - wouldn't he need oxygen to be to fire like that?" Wash's question is rhetorical in as much as the deep groan from Reynolds indicates a discussion on the subject will not be forth-coming.

Another shot.

"_Ta ma de hun dan!"_ Mal snaps - grabbing up the comm. "Quit shooting at us! _dong ma?_ Noakes? This is Serenity - this is..."

The Captain's words fade away as he regards the figure in the distance.

Wash is looking at him too. "What - is - he - doing?"

Noakes, if Noakes it be, is still hopping up and down - only now making strange monkey-like movements with his arm, waving it over and across his head - as if slicking down hair that has somehow sprouted up through his helmet.

There comes a fresh burst of static from the comm. and then the man's voice can be heard.

"Serenity huh? Uh..." the monkey movements continuing, "You got, uh, Inara Serra there with you?"

Wash and Mal exchange looks.

"Inara, huh. She graces us on occasion... that's true," Mal say into the comm. - with more diplomacy than sense perhaps.

"Well, now..." replies the old man yonder, "You boys better come over, let me see your jaws working in plain sight."

Mal acknowledges this - then turns to his pilot.

"One of those days huh?" Wash opines.

"As always", Mal agrees sourly. He toggles the switch on the comm. "Jayne? You busy?"

"Nope."

"Good. Get suited up. Shepherd?"

"Captain?"

"Like you wanted. We're making a house call."

"Very well."

Ain't but a few minutes later and the be-suited figures of Malcolm Reynolds and Jayne Cobb are wading the vacuum - heading out towards the platform, a little way behind - and with surprising grace, Shepherd Book is following. Through the windows of the flight deck Wash watches them go.

...

_Tin cups,_ thinks Malcolm Reynolds, how many memories can be found in the tiny hollow of a plain metal mug... He remembers the squeaking pump and the splash of water back on the ranch, back on Shadow, back home... Home-that-Was... gulping the cold liquid down after a hot day among the horses. He remembers taking the tin cup from Zoë as they sat together, backs against the ruins in the muddy meat fields of Serenity Valley - the taste of the brackish liquid and the sound of her voice, "congratulations on your promotion, Captain." The sudden eruption of gunfire - pulling his own weapon free with his left hand because his right was still clamped rigid to the handle of the cup and he couldn't make his fingers work. He remembers passing the tin cup - full of brandy, around the table in the galley of Serenity - celebrating her first run - first success - Kaylee and Wash with their competing smiles, Zoë again - but this time with shining eyes. And himself - watching them all... and drinking down the moment. Tin cups.

Surprisingly friendly, J.D. Noakes starts passing one to him now. They are sat together round a tiny table made of ill-assorted metal scrap - and the air is pressurised. Gravity though - that seems - he watches Noakes's hand bob towards him again - off a notch.

Nodding his thanks, Mal takes the cup. There's some sort of home brew inside, he can feel the muscles in his throat tightening already.

"Here, allow me", Shepherd Book shuffles across the cramped cabin to help the old man cut some bread and cheese. "Your own?" he asks.

"Yep," says the old man. "Made 'em myself - got a little, uh, refinery - for the distillation of fine foods and liquors." he cackles.

"That's quite impressive." Book nods. Mal is looking over at Jayne, Cobb's boredom threshold might be just about crossed by now... but could be he's content enough with a chop to hand. But then he drinks some of the whiskey, and slams a large fist down - denting the table, his face purple as he yelps in agonised Chinese. Noakes swears some in return, then taking a large gulp of his own whiskey leans in close, twisting his moustachioed face up towards Cobb. "Jayne Cobb..." the man growls, "Knew your Ma." And as if that makes everything simple and clear, Noakes sits back sudden on his haunches.

"So..." he says, this time to Mal, "Whaddya want from me, son? You got me real polite but I was hoping for finer company since I know you got the Companion in there, somewhere - but here you are showing up with a Preacher instead... is he really for me?" A rude cackle.

Mal decides to let the crazy _Hoe-tze_ have his moment, Book could answer for himself. Indeed the Shepherd, passing plates around as he does so, says smoothly,

"A man gets the time allotted Mr. Noakes, seems to me you may not be far off your span of days. Perhaps then, I could be of service to you?"

He places some cheese upon the man's plate and looks expectant.

...

Wash is yawning as he leans back in his seat - aware that his stomach is already beginning to growl, that he hasn't slept in - like, a bed - since, well, too long for sure. His hands are beginning to get restless and his eyes starting to rove for distractions, looking listlessly over the dinosaurs, trolls and other toys that litter the flight desk.

"Look to me, oh my children..." he intones, with mock solemnity, leaning forward to address the ragged line of figures, "For I have brought you through the wilderness unto a new home - the promised land - the promised... well, not so much the promised land, the promised - well, not ok, technically, there with the promising, but I'm sure I hinted pretty strongly and - hey, you call ME ungrateful!" He waggles a finger sternly at the largest and most truculent dinosaur. "Look upon your God and tremble oh my fickle, fickle, children - do not anger me or there will be - badness will come and great... gnashing of teeth and, yes why do you think I gave you such lovely big teeth if not, you know, for the gnashing - and anyway, yes - wrath - in my anger and smiting with a big... thing that smites. A thing like -"

Without warning but with perfect timing there's a terrible rending sound and Serenity slams hard to port - the cock-pit twisting at an unnatural angle to deposit Wash half on the floor and half upside down in the chair - too shocked even to swear. No point in swearing anyhow - the proximity alarms start ringing - every gorram one.

"That", Wash says finally, in a flat low voice buried under the blare.


	2. In The Maybe World

_ Chapter two: In The Maybe World _

Zoë hears her husband's voice - far off and muzzy - calling her name, concerned and urgent but - the damnedest thing - for the life of her, she cannot work out where it's coming from.

_I'm concussed _she realises. _Also, I'm upside down. _ She draws a deep breath, filling her powerful chest with it - lets it go again, real slow and easy. _No, the ship's upside down..._ she corrects herself.

But then... something's really wrong... Serenity can't be upside down - there is no upside down - not out in space. Moving with utmost caution Zoë begins to inch her way along what used to be ceiling but now poses as the floor. Hearing the hull give out another groan, Zoë sure hopes the ceiling won't drop the pretence any time soon.

...

Further along from Zoë and off at angle even crazier than usual, River Tam's cabin is in serious disarray. The siblings having been flung - and violently - off the bed and hard into the walls. Worse yet, Simon has smacked clean into a cupboard door and mirror. There is blood now on the glass - blood too in his eyes. _That would be why I'm having trouble keeping them open _ he thinks... no, says the calm Doctor inside him - that is because you have head trauma and shock. Through his sticky lashes, he can see the tumbled form of his sister crawling slowly towards him, her features hidden behind two dark wings of hair. Her breathing is pained, winded. Then her head comes up - and for a second the face is not one he recognises, so calm - supernaturally, almost. Simon fights a rising panic.

"River?" he asks stupidly - and then watches as the cabin, the face of his sister - everything - telescopes away into the far horizon and disappears. His head hits the plating with a nasty thunk.

...

The exo-platform has spun 180 degrees and then imbedded itself in whatever has hit them. Soft creaking sounds from the metal walls and flooring. Mal collects his wits - which had been making a break for freedom - and clutching a shelf for support drags himself to his hard booted feet, looks out the windows.

"What the -" there's little point in saying anything else.

The thing that has hit them is still moving, pulling behind a wake of metal fragments from the junk-field – it's already covered in dull pieces of scrap and iron... and it grows as it moves... the junk sticking to the thing. Whatever it is, it's also slowing down.

"Asteroid?" Mal wonders, aloud and incredulous.

Jayne's up by now - gun out and suspicious - he waves it at the window.

"We got hit by a rock?" he asks Mal. Then, as the Captain begins calling out to Serenity, Cobb snaps back at Noakes, covering him. "You ain't got alarms?"

The old man has staggered to his feet, using the edge of the table as an aid. He hollers blue murder at Jayne, seems angry at the man, not the rock - ball - unidentified _niou-se _ - that you'd think he had a right to be sore at. All the same, Noakes grabs a muscular Cobb arm for support.

"Shepherd?" asks Reynolds.

An affirmative grunt comes from somewhere behind the table - a shock of wild white hair rising into view - if he was about to laugh Mal changes his mind when he sees the pallor on the Preacher's face.

"You hurt?"

The Shepherd shakes his head dazedly -

"I..." he mumbles. With an odd jerk he brings his left hand across into sight. It's bloodied and the neat grey of his sleeve is soiled. "Bread knife", he says looking down, "just a scratch." He looks back at the Captain, his eyes beginning to clear. "And a bump, Captain - you say something hit us?"

...

"A rock, honey, seems like. It reads that way..." Wash, trying to read the scope - upside down, while talking to Zoë, keeps his voice soft and reassuring, it helps - him, a little.

Despite the chaos - the concussion - the confusion - the lurid coloured emergency lights, Zoë maintains her calm.

"Any notion as to why we're upside down dear?" she asks - her voice brittle in the comm.

"Ah... no?" Wash is beginning to get a nasty suspicion though. "That is - I think maybe, we're stuck to – _ai ya! _ - I think this thing's metal Zoë!" The scope is showing a nasty red fluorescence. "Hell of a... Magnetic too... _zhe shi shen me lan... _ - this is insane!"

Still making progress, however awkward along the temporary flooring, stepping over the crud and detritus flung across her path - and some evil looking flickers of wire and cable - Zoë pauses for breath - listening to her husband revving up again.

"What is it?" she finally gets the question in.

"I think it's a ship!" All of Wash's indicators in the zone marked ASTONISHED.

...

Jayne is bemused. "Wait - that's a ship?"

Still clutching his arm, Noakes hooting laugh is mocking. "'Course it's a ruttin' ship you - MMphh Gah!"

Naturally Jayne chokes them words right off and Noakes finds himself dangling from the end of Cobb's yard arm.

"Mal?" Jayne asks.

Reynolds, standing by the cabins comm. panel, is equally livid. "You knew that thing was coming here..." he says to Noakes, his voice made all the menacing for its politeness.

Book reaches across to touch Mal lightly.

"That may be so Captain - but the timing... We can't hold him responsible for that."

"Oh, I can hold him all day," Jayne is being considerate. "But I'll drop him if you really want me to." He adds helpfully.

Noakes lets out a wheezy yelp.

Mal's already moving onto more immediate concerns, leaning in to the comm.

"Kaylee?"

"Hey, well, thanks for asking, Captain!" Hard to tell if the mechanic's complaining or not.

"You ok?"

"Right as nine..." comes the bright reply, "little woozy..." - a pause - "hey, anyone tell you we're upside down?"

"Sure you ain't a LOT woozy?"

Kaylee's incongruous laugh floats back at him.

"S'folk would pay good coin for this kinda woozy Capt'n, but if Serenity ain't upside down' then I am. I was in the shower, too."

"Gorram – and I ain't there to see it," Jayne don't realise he's actually spoken.

"JAYNE!"

"Sorry Mal." Oh, now he does. "Guess I took a blow on the head."

"Only your Ma knows how hard..." Wash can't resist coming back onto the comm for that.

Captain Malcolm Reynolds is losing his patience.

"OK CREW! We done? This, I do believe, is a situation!" He summons up an emergency reserve of the steady. "Zoë? Tell me you are out there..."

A pause - Mal counts seconds in his head… until he hears,

"Most of me Sir."

"Are you upside down?" Mal asks quickly.

"Most definitely not Sir, but Serenity is."

Shepherd Book moves agilely across the cabin space, despite his pain. "Captain..." he says, concerned.

Mal looks at him.

"I know..." he says quietly, then deliberately upping his tone he talks back into the comm. "How's the head, Zoë?"

"Never was dropped on it, Sir - if that's what you're asking... concussion. You remember concussion, Sir? We're old friends."

Mal smiles at that - thinly, but a smile all the same.

"I surely do...You take your friend along to the med bay now - you hear?"

Another long pause - Mal counts again, measuring the heavy steps Zoë is taking between comm points - and trying to ignore the groans and creaks from Serenity herself - and then Zoë says,

"Doc and the Girl are nearer... I'll check in on them first..."

"Ok, shiny - tell me what you find." Mal lets out a large breath and turns back to Jayne.

"Put him down Jayne," he orders.

Cobb's clean forgot he's still holding the old buzzard, throws the old man back into a chair.

"We leavin'?"

"Absolutely - can't be fast enough."

Jayne looks pleased enough at that - but the Shepherd and the old man are scowling.

"Captain," Book picks his words, "this vessel - we should find out more about it..."

"Can't see reason in that, Shepherd - not unless there's a big fat owner's reward for a missing... whatever _fei-oo _ that thing is."

"It might help our situation to have a few answers Captain." The Shepherd says reasonably.

"Wash, can you get power? Can we fly?"

Comes the sound of Wash grappling with his upside down controls.

"Maybe, if Kaylee can help get us right sided... but there's a problem Mal - magnetic field of some kind, holding us down."

"Can you break it?"

"Well, I - whoa - I mean..."

"Can - we - _LEAVE! _" Reynolds knows gorram well that Wash is stalling and  
Serenity's pilot fesses up.

"Ah hell Mal - aren't you even curious?"

"Nope." _Why are you? _

"Ah, c'mon - would you LOOK at that thing?" Wash - so often the voice of restraint - and retreat - is still a pilot, a flyer first and foremost - and that part of him is sure piqued by the thing that steamrolled them... if it was really a ship... it had to have someone at the wheel...

"That 'thing' near knocked the brains clear out your wife! Curious? No. Hungry, tired, bruised - and mighty..."

"Grouchy?"

"Pissed."

"I woulda stuck on grouchy," Wash says helplessly, "but I read you, Captain, just thinking we owe to ourselves to see exactly what kind of bowling ball turned Serenity into skittles."

"What kind?" Mal is dismissive. _Is he ever NOT? _Wonders Wash. "Kind I ain't interested in. Got mouths to feed, wounds to heal - coin to earn - coin Wash, you remember money? Coz I'm beginning to forget." He swears himself calm. "We patch up, move on."

_You sound more and more like fridge magnet. _ Wash did actually consider that one time – a nice box of them, not hard to make… 'We patch up, move on.' 'Leave no/one behind. Well, ok, maybe sometimes …' But actually magnets weren't so easy come by – till now! - and well, ok, maybe that was fortunate.

"Can't do that Sir." Zoe's laboured voice interrupts from the intercom, "not unless you wanna lose the Doctor."

"Huh?"

"He's tore up plenty... and the med supplies are pretty much jello on the floor. That is, I mean - the ceiling, Sir." Zoë reports as she stands in the shattered sick bay. She's not in a good way now herself, draggin' Simon down – or was it up - to the bay was exhausting. Upside to concussion is the aches and complaints from her head, shoulders and legs getting muffled, she can barely feel her wounds and bruises - Downside being that her hands are beginning to lose their movement - downside is barely feeling _anything. _ Doc's laid out on a cushion tore free and fallen from one of the couches. Zoe's feet are crunching glass and plastic from the main doors.

Stating the obvious – with Mal too busy turning a vicious shade of pale and chewing on his jaw to do it himself - Shepherd Book says,

"Seems likely there'd be medical supplies aboard that ship, Captain."

Reynolds jaw's still moving back and forth but he manages a gritted,

"Well, then", before asking Zoë "The Girl?"

"Quiet, Sir - not talking. Shock, seems like."

Mal is about to say something else but Zoë has a request of her own. "I may have to go faint soon, Sir, with your permission."

Mal shuts his eyes a beat, turns an exasperated scowl.

"Gentlemen, best suit up again. Looks like we're going shopping."

Strangely enough, Noakes don't seem inclined to protest at their muscling in on his haul. But then, being in a confined space with Jayne Cobb will reorganise a body's priorities some. Plus - Mal takes another look at the...thing busy gathering trash to itself - plenty of trouble to go around there.

Here was hoping there was a pearl in the midst of that _go-se_.

Feels like a slow time later that several EVA suited figures are piling across the void and onto the surface of the iron ball below. Tethered to each other and the line held tight to the Exo-Platform - as they abseil down.

"Watch your feet..." cautions Mal - "I don't want to end up as iron filings on this magnet."

They can feel the tug on the metal in their suits. Fancier suits would be proofed against magnetic fields - but the only people with fancier suits would be purple bellies - and, it turns out, J.D. Noakes. He was going first -with a promise from Mal that if things go wrong they are like to be using him as a door mat.

It's pretty gorram clear that Noakes knows exactly what he's been waiting for - and as nest eggs went... well, this is a dilly. But getting inside won't be easy - and, what with the lack of time and opportunity for Jayne to satisfy his interrogational urges, it's far from certain that Noakes really knows a way.

Mal hopes Kaylee will come in handy here.

"Ok," Noakes's voice scratches through the helmet's com-system. "We gotta clear some of my junk away and, like I said, call up a hatch." He has brought an impressive welding kit and some other tools - which, Mal has 'requisitioned' at once. No/one can face Serenity's cargo bay and equipment stores just yet – and it probably ain't safe to do so.

Noakes is using a pad on his arm to access the Platform's computers. Every few seconds a burst of low frequency energy should hit a desired spot to interfere with the magnetism of the asteroids 'hull'. Large chunks of debris got to be cleared away first though – and for Jayne and Mal this means laborious digging, lifting, drilling. Kaylee – it's reckoned – will tap into the circuits under the 'skin' of the thing beneath them, the circuits then inflating a tube - creating an airlock through the hull and into the ship.  
Gonna have to be quick - magnetic fields this strong? Not healthy. And back on the boat, Wash is the only one looking after Zoë and Simon.

Looking almost like a doctor herself Kaylee listens down to the electronic chatter pulsing through the porous membranes beneath the surface, gingerly connecting a palm top computer to thin vein-like circuitry. She's clearly freaked.

"I ain't never seen anything like this..." she moans.

"This is our day for - well, it's just a very bad day." Mal - looking at his watch already, checks that Wash can hear them. Kaylee wires up some extra leads - pressing buttons - not easy in the oversized mittens of the EVA suit.

Dangling above her, Noakes is watching it all with interest - and watching him  is Shepherd Book. Mal had wanted the Shepherd back on the boat with Wash - but he couldn't order the preacher and Book had had other ideas.

"It was very clever of you," he murmurs to Noakes, as he surveys the junkfield around them, the strange object below and the corkscrew shaped Exo-platform above, stuck quite securely it appears. "The junk-field, to slow that vessel down... the right sort of device to 'land' on it... You must be a very patient man."

Noakes makes with the _Hhmmph! _

"I had plenty of other things to keep me occupied - the rest was just the mapping and the math."

"I must admit," Book confesses, "that you are not the man you initially appeared to be - or the way the Captain painted you..."

Noakes makes another disparaging sound. "And you Shepherd - are you the everyday Preacher folks are lead to, uh, believe?"

There just is no quick answer to that...

"Ship must be old though..." Book tries another tack, "must've been going fair slow for the 'net' to work."

"Oh she's old," cackles Noakes, "all the way back to the Earth-That-Was."

Book has already considered this - but hearing the words rattles him nonetheless. "An ark-ship?"

"Something like that..." Noakes is still laughing. "Famous old bogie - been travelling on for the longest time - hell, I was just a green bean when I first spotted her."

"What do you expect to find in there?" the Shepherd asks.

"Behind Door no.4?" A narrow glance, "Apart from the most antiquities one man with an appetite for coin ever laid eyes on? I got no idea, Shepherd."

(And a man versed in lies can tell that one.)

"I am so very reassured." This is Mal. Jayne has finished rock humping and the Captain can see the look in his eyes.

"Plunder and coin?" Cobb don't need to spell it out – just enjoys doing it.

"How many gorram times have we said that before?" Mal is weary of that one. "And there never is… yet here we are again." His head has begun throbbing. "Hurry it up Kaylee."

Kaylee herself feels oddly pressured - her head is aching too and there's a nasty tumbling feeling in her guts.

"We're getting sick," notes the Shepherd.

Kaylee squeals as one of her tools breaks off and floats away - out of range of the beam from the Exo-platform, it sticks fast and quick to the surface of the ship. Mal feels his inner ears protesting - high whining sounds and a rising wave like roar.

"Not in the mood for this, Kaylee - I don't have the patience to wet nurse you through your girlish tremblings, do your job and get that door open!"

"I'm a mechanic!" Kaylee yells back, "not a bell hop!" punching the offending hatch for emphasis - and damn if with a slow hiss the thing don't open.

"In years to come Captain," Wash says softly in Mal's helmet, "you will look back and congratulate yourself on your swift and devious use of reverse psychology, convinced you did it on purpose."

"I DID do it on purpose!" Mal lies with a relieved grin.

"Can I hear you _smiling_ Captain?"

No reply - the comm giving back nothing but the cold.

_Oh tactless, tactless man _ thinks Wash to himself.

But seconds later and Mal has already forgotten Wash's comment - they are moving into the mysterious ship - slipping between the layers of its polymer lining, their tiny figures scuttling across and down - like fleas finding the honey pot of a rich blooded arm.

...

And Wash? Wash is singing. Little flat, but, hey buddy - you wanna try singing to dinosaurs, it's raw I'm telling you.

"Here we sit like birds in the wilderness, birds in the wilderness, BIRDS in the wilderness...down in Demerara..."

_Yeah, flat - all my hits in the key of M. M for morose. Also? M for My wife is unconscious - in the M for Med bay, oh and did I mention upside down?! M for Me, me, me - I want to be on that ship, seeing the old tech - with my new blue eyes, get my flyer's M for Mojo working. Is that so wrong? _

__

M for Maybe if I just keep distracting M for Myself...  


_  
Course, there could just be a way to listen into that thing out there… _

Wash looks up and down the tendrils of collision spilt cable.

Catches the eye of a sceptical Dino –

"Watcha lookin' at me like that for, fella? Huh? I'm just thinking – Captain could use some back-up…"

Wire.

Now Wash doesn't quite have Kaylee's natural knack with engines, no, not the big mechanics, but wires – as in _wiring - _ no slouch with the wiring. Plain fact, scares him how easy it is to jack into the system…

– almost there, just reconnect the –

M for Murmurs.

_What was…? _

Murmurs in the white noise.

M for - my hearing, as in, was that M for _Morse? _

Tuning with an M for manly hand now.

M for "Is there anybody out there?"

Oh well, sure that was actually _I _but alright, alright. M for Mother of - !

The voice when it comes is unexpected, a burst of static and "...word in the darkness...reaches of unbeing...beyond the realms..."

_All the gorram M's! _

M for Maaaaaaaaal! Captain where are you when I need you?

Wash blinks, too astonished even to reach for the switch. There cannot be people on that thing. Not after this long… unless they've been breeding…

"Entering the Chinese room."

"Yeeeahh," Wash grabs frantically for the scatter of plastic, "the creeping up? Not good! Remember we talked about the NOT GOOD!"

River tilts her head, stares at him, just a hint of something behind the solemn.

"Not people," she says. "Can't call them that. Not people. Not anymore."


	3. Girders of Babel

_Chapter three: Girders of Babel_

The first surprise is the light - triggered by their movements, sure, but it feels like visitors were expected. Mal has been picturing a derelict, dark and broken - but the walls run smooth, a bright vaulted space. A sense of dislocation, for this clean neutral space speaks of absence. There is nothing to show that people have ever walked these corridors - but gravity pulls their feet to the floor and Jayne's boot leaves a dark scuff. Mal checks the colour patch on his wrist, then real cautious, cracks the seal on his helmet.

Even before the first breath of air strokes his nostrils, Mal smells the memories. Seems impossible - and no doubt some Wash or other would point out that it WAS impossible - but all the same, this air that has been scrubbed and filtered so many times - become purely the idea of air - reeks of memories.

Flings him with that first breath - in a flash back years, back a life - back to a claustrophobic and excited first billet at an Independent blockade post. More than a life away now - back at the early end of the war, when people - children - like him kicked through the mess of dumped bags, heavy boots, trinkets of home and grabbed whatever bunk space could be found. Lay down bone-weary but wired tight, lay down and steamed with the cramped and mighty adventure of it all. Later there was restlessness, high hopes, and boredom adding to the stew. Later still there was fear.

Yep... Mal knew that funk well enough and possible or not - despite the orderly nothing of the surroundings, the lack of a single personalised trace - it fills his nostrils now .

Maybe everyone here died too.

_Dead folks got the drop on us before - never again_. Mal can see it writ clear on Jayne's face. Cobb is twitchy, but there ain't even shadows to start at - not in this bright and eerie-ass place. Reminds Jayne of hospitals - or them sky jails the Alliance seems so sweet on.'Cept he don't even remember a hospital that felt this..._ Never knew clean could be - creepy. _Hoists his gun a little higher.

This ain't the first derelict they've come across. But they are well clear of Reaver space here, hell, well clear of anywhere and gone. This place has air and light and power, still travelling after all these years. Somehow that's the worst thing of all.

Kaylee has not taken her helmet off - a gesture Mal has noticed, turns to her now, says,

"You'll be wanting to go play Doctor with the Doctor?" (Jayne guffaws loudly, - Kaylee's blush is visible clear through the glass of her EVA helmet - but so too is a very determined look. ) "You do that then," Mal nods, "Like to need you gettin' Serenity right sided again."

Kaylee blinks.

"You can do that, l'il Kaylee." Mal adds with confidence, provoking a grin from the woman. "Tell Wash I want my ship back."

"Sure Cap'n." She's already turning away, only too glad to leave. Mal watches her go.

"Damn." Noakes comes out with it suddenly - "She was as pretty as new boots."

"Oh, she's cherry blossom," Mal agrees. "Can't say the same for us. Now, are we are going places?"

Noakes sighs. He moves across to a large block, almost a small obelisk, with a wide grill on the face, and there is something in him that makes Mal look twice. There's intent and purpose there, not the quick greediness of a scavenger. Ain't but a thought away to come up quick and sudden behind the man.

"And do you want to be tellin' us exactly what we are going to be walking into, before we do?"

...

Kaylee's so keen to get back into the homely confines of Serenity, she don't notice the figure, splayed like a quiet starfish over her head. River gently folds herself down from the ceiling, graceful even in the suit, and tilts her head. Feels the pull on her, obeys...

_No maps for these territories. Beyond the realms of human knowledge, only electronic eyes have seen these storms, metal birds riding a solar wind, messengers ahead of our coming, their siren call across the void to mark our way._

_..._

"This was an early exploration vessel, one of the advance ships, sent out before the Exodus. They were pathfinders, hell, you might call 'em the torch-bearers. Left the trail lit up like Christmas for the big ark-ships to follow. Only I guess nobody ever caught up with this one..."

_One spark of light in the void, a mote in God's eye, a pearl of wisdom in blackest night, a stone that yet carries life within it. We are the Word in the Darkness. Beat upon by wings of night, the fear and ignorance that thrive in dark places, and what is darker than the reaches of unbeing we travel?_

"_..._This is the _Endeavour_. The lost ship. One of the great bogeys of the spaceways. Gentlemen, we are going to solve one of the mysteries of the early times..."

"That's all well and good, but what exactly was this thing carrying that's worth a damn?"

"Knowledge, Captain. This ship was built and launched from Earth-That-Was." Noakes' old hand touches the wall with a kind of reverence. "And somewhere in this place, there will be a central computer. We've lost such a lot over the years, do you realise that? The Core Worlds have handed over their liberty for security, exchanged progress for stability..."

"You wear brown during the War, Noakes?"

It's a pointed question – but Book's already gorram sure what the answer will be_. I'm just following my own footsteps through a dream… _

"He wore white." Book says quietly. "Didn't you - Professor Noakes."

"Been a long time since I had call to use that title." Noakes gives Book a beady look. "Ain't all of us using the names and titles we were born with."

Mal, though mindful of the last run-in he had with science gone wrong, has known Noakes for years. The transition from crazy old coot to cool man of science is proving a difficult leap. But the gnarled hands are sure as they work across the console.

"Back in the day..." a grim smile, "back when we all had lives, there were some of us who believed that we could make a difference, restore things that were lost. Machines that could be sent into places you wouldn't send a human."

Mal thinks on it, nods.

"Like the hunter-seekers we had for mine-fields."

"I'm talking about machines that did more than go where the operator sent them. Artificial intelligence. Machines that could make decisions." Mouth twists in disgust. "Only corporation that would give us a grant was Rossum-Tyrell."

"The love-bot makers?" Yeah, Jayne would know that.

"The same." A snort. "A real case of make love, not war. And then of course the Guild weighed in, all sorts of pressure, about 'counterfeiting humanity'. But then, all through history, it's been the same. So much cheaper to use people. Because with the right tools you can programme people, too. Propaganda. The mystique of the fighting man." Sideways glance. "Religion."

"Well, that's fascinating history," Mal's attention is, as ever, on the practical. _Ain't the time to be dancing with shaky legs. _"Let's get to dealing with the here and now." Eyes the blank wall. "You think you can get an inward hatch open?"

"Can't but try." Noakes is keen to agree. "What do you normally use to get through locked doors, Captain?"

"Jayne." Mal admits. "But I'm thinking you might want to be using something a little more subtle."

...

River stands by the doorway, but what she sees is not the curved metal and rivets, but...

_I have looked into the mouth of darkness, and there spoke the tongues of angels._

...- spindles of metal, tiny hollows, alcoves, tubes leading to tubes and into the dark. So much metal, like a taste on the back of her tongue - like a child licking batteries. She sways against - part of a wall - can't tell, can't be sure... but the feel of the metal, its thickness - in fact all around her, the air pressure, the weight, the mass, the density, the space - (filled once with flesh and breath and light) - the dark... all these she can measure, quantify, calculating exact all the equations of madness that this place contains. Like a hard hand across her mouth - a physical impact. She was tired - she was frightened - and yet and yet and yet... now? Still walking, feeling, exploring.

"... that's my story... blank pages... diaries, logs and files decayed - check again, no manual on this one..." Intoning with every step. "No dolls here..." and no dressing up, no need to perform... that should be freedom - should taste of freedom, not the coppery on her tongue, right now, but - "I miss the dolls..." paradox and true. On Serenity - each twist and curve - each cabin and bunk - that's how she finds her way, marks her path, taking one doll out from inside another - leaving a doll as ensign to her passage, breadcrumbs through the forest, dolls within dolls... :

This one, child tiny, for Simon, the smallest doll that could be contained - bar the last, the near invisible, the most secret "Shhh! We don't tell"...  
and the biggest doll for Jayne - tall, fierce with demon eyes, coal black all Baba Yaga - and so he's afraid...  
Next, on down to Kaylee; "This doll, is your sister - she's beautiful and you should be afraid too - crazy sister like that..."  
And the blank doll for Zoe - "Not a child, not your child", blank faced totemic, nothing but cargo, truly - "haul me off to some planet soon as ordered..."

Bright and crazy doll for the boy-man, who has the best toy of all, colours of childhood still in his eyes as he flies...  
..and the best and the brightest doll for last - Yes... keep that coy determined doll for the Captain - huh, leave it in the cockpit, he knows... "wrapped around my finger soon enough - made safe."  
Missing - missed - forgot - left some dolls behind - Inara took hers, middle doll wrapped in muslin and taken back to Sihnon or some Companion Moon... and the Shepherd... what doll for him? The innocent - the martyr - the virgin - what to suit?  
"I don't give a hump if you're innocent or not!" so what then? Which doll does he require? What key to unlock the number of the Priest?

...

"You were a scientist?"

Noakes rubs slow fingers against the damp of his neckerchief, glancing up at Jayne's disbelief with a sly look. "That ain't no secret – that's just a long time ago... Brownies never made the most of their available resources..." an edge of bitterness creeping into his tone, "And I ain't purple minded so - here we are."

"Here? Where the good gorram is here anyhow?" Jayne slams his hand to his thigh impatiently. "You got us into this - no two ways 'bout that!"

Noakes eyes the big man worriedly and Shepherd Book moves swift to placate the riled Cobb.

"Perhaps it was providence Jayne..." He looks the man in the eye, his expression mild.

"You mean like fate?" Jayne sounds sceptical.

"Fate's just a word, Jayne. Let's see what we find..."

Noakes nods eagerly.

"Could be all kinds, treasure and such - you said it yourself, Cobb."

Jayne growls - but he knows the truth of that, so, a shrug. "Hell, gotta be someone watching our backs Preacher."

(River's small figure ghosts behind the men. There is a Presence here. It hides beyond sight, but the feel of it is a hundred needles upon the skin...)

"I'm glad it's you, Jayne," Book smiles, patting him again on the arm.

"Well, ain't this just a sunny Sunday's worth of gladness," scathes an irritated and restless Mal. "But way I hear tell – Sunday's a day of rest – are we resting here?!"

Noakes wriggles deft away from both men, a fistful of wiring uncoiling from the 'obelisk' through his fingers as he does so - plugs the loose trailing ends into the wall. _Huh. _

"You want to feel that, Captain?"

Mal puts a hand out to the section nearest of wall.

"Spongy," he says with some surprise, "What is that – rubber?"

The only reply is a flash of eyebrows as Noakes connects a few cables, maybe a sigh too – only that weren't…

_Jian ta de gui!_

"Pick a door Captain."

There are doors right enough. Doors all over. Doors everywhere.

...

For Kaylee, 'door' means re-entering Serenity through the turned around airlock, not so hard – entryway being designed for a ship's routine spin – but the Cargo Bay itself, just a mess of fun. Boxes and crates – even with Serenity's paltry take of late, always some shipment, supplies, small payments, personals – left luggage. Tools, lot of 'em. Steam hammer, screwdrivers, torches, drills, a heap of brittle teeth set in the mouth of the new defined area looking to bite the unwary.

Oh ,sure, there's a path cleared by Jayne and Mal but in the hectic rush to the mystery ship, Kaylee never did notice how hard a path it was, still littered and uncertain and - basically not the floor.

Good news for now; Mule ain't busted free, straps have held. Upside down won't drop the vehicle much. Bad news coming; Serenity slips any more, another lurch leaves her sideways… mule's like to pitch engine over fork - being hit by a mule just ain't heartening to think on.

_Well ,then don't. Got a mind full of distractions – try some of them instead. _

Hell, that don't help much – biggest distraction of all's laid up in sick-bay and can't do a thing for him till we lay hands on some med-packs…

Ain't reassuring to hear the groan from the ship as Kaylee forces herself forward one foot at a time.

...

Stood outside the Med-bay, Wash is trying to gather his thoughts.. This is the place known to passengers as the Common Area. Crew don't call it nothing but 'upstairs'.

_Should be calm… why am I not calm? Hell, Zoë seems ok, considering, you know – concussion (not so sure of Simon though – little pasty). Also there's the whole not currently listening to the scarifying radio up on the bridge. Yep – got that going on… and to get back to, uh – that actually being not so good – but still… _

Hey c'mon buddy, keep with the positive!

_  
Look around, it's not so bad. Well, ok – it's pretty bad but... _

Common area's a wide space, that's a bonus, fair simple to step around the up-turned table, the chairs, supplies and the like burst from the latrine door open above – trail of white paper, soft explosion of shaving cream.

_Could be a worry though – we got four bars of soap lurking somewhere about. Oh – yeah, a mighty danger – I'm scared of soap now? Not buying it, fella_.

Also, one shirt, a single ear-ring from a client of Inara, a drawing – River's, an upset box of pastels, a blade of Jayne's. Crumpled maps, Ariel or Bellerophon maybe, couple of palm-tops, a silver wrist-band mighta been Saffron's… some pieces of a word game, a ball and a tumbled set of jacks, glinting under the weak lights.

Watching them slide now around the unevenly angled ceiling/floor – not reassuring. Feeling the rumble and shudder through the iron and nickel, the sudden unpredictable tilt - that's worse.

But the real bad – the thing to send him shivering – is… just a feeling… a trace of sensation… _it's just in my head -_ a buzzing in the undertow of his thoughts – a static interruption – _it's just the magnetic field_ – a shimmering haze on his mind's horizon…

...

_Silent fires across the neural networks – white heat travelling down the wires – a thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand combinations of instantaneous thought connection – too much to contain and too much to express, except as fire._

But folk'll see things in fire – human nature since the cave dwellers huddled together in the rain lashed mountains, since the roaming tribes camped on the night cold plains, since there were hunters in the fetid swamps and up on the bilious ice floes, human nature to blow into the smoke and the spark, the ashes and embers and to see the living shapes of flame drawn visions, to cast bones before the incendiary theatre – seeing stories, histories and prophecies dream. So it is now – people feel the fire and they see – things…


	4. In Strange Pursuit of Alternative Truths

chapter four: In Strange Pursuit of Alternative Truths.

Simon is swimming, moving with the blood warm current, ebb and flow of the playful water, the colour rich lagoon - coral structures are a half buried alien world, the glitter and shine. The boy is drawn by the beckoning undulations of reeds, anemones, urchins – the shy dance of a thousand silver fish flickering in and out of his peripheral vision.

He is six today. And his family are celebrating with a holiday, a private resort. But these details are fast fading from his mind under the spell of the waters and the aquatic treasures spilling before him, the heady rush of freedom that comes from surrendering to the tide. Surrendering completely.

He is in heaven.

...

"So it IS rubber," Jayne head-butts the wall. _Bouncy – kinda fun even. _

"Of a sort," Noakes rubs the droop of his moustache. "Smart polymers most likely – but the principal is basic since avalanche protection… You ever been buried in the snow, Jayne?"

"Nope. Been buried under most everything else, though."

"Well, you ever minded to go mountaineering – you might wanna carry a bubble with you. Thing's pressure balanced, you get some angry snow come down and whoop! Damn thing'll inflate right around you. Save your life at that."

Jayne has a mercenary's instinct for the useful where survival's concerned. Nods appreciation, "Sounds handy."

"So, you got the same show here – just buried in space, not snow. Plastic's more advanced naturally, knows what it's doing, when to stop growing – and maybe the inside gets done the same way."

Jayne starts as the Shepherd says,

"Nano-technology you mean."

"Could be…" Noakes agrees. "Course, that sorta tech – no call for it now, Alliance ain't pushed it (at least officially) – Indies never had the use for something they figure the Alliance would like… a dumb circle, unfashionable science, huh."

Noakes shakes his head – but he's noticed Jayne buggin' out.

"Unfashionable?" Cobb sounds strained. "I'm telling you - it's coming back!"

How could something this old look so new? Mal can't quite get it straight in his head. He knows this ship was older than worlds, but it didn't feel like it. Didn't feel like a home.

Home was...a place filled with people, with their lives. Quite often with the smell of whatever had been burnt in the kitchen recently. Machine grease and gun oil, and those crappy little candles Kaylee liked to put around the place. (Puts the gentle scent of incense from his mind, 'cos that ain't home, that's the smell of regrets and might-have-beens that never were.)

But a smell that will always take him back home is that of old paper. His mother always had books around the ranch-house, proper books, not datasticks. (All gone to ashes now, save the little anthology of verse that Mal had stowed with him on his enlisting...) It still lives in his mind, the ranch-house, warm wood of the porch under his feet, sky turning to purple and gold, and the sound of the dinner triangle (seven years old, and allowed to take his turn with the metal stick, enough noise to wake the very dead.)

Strange that a man born on a prairie world should feel so comfortable within the small metal walls of a ship.

"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space..." The lines float up in his mind, "were it not that I have bad dreams."

What dreams, what nightmares had come to those folks walled up in this sterile existence?

_First day at the office dear, see anyone nice? _

No.

_See anyone at all? _

No.

Even Reynolds is not immune to the spooksome lack of people, evidence of people even. _One hell of a hoovering up happened here… _

All evidence removed – _of what? _

EVA suited legs lumbering past desks – neatly ordered, no wait – ooooh a pen, not in a holder! Chaos is come! Surely.

_You want the ship to go faster? You need to fill in a B.S.123 for that, uh, Sir.  
- If I must.  
I'm afraid we're out of stock for that form just now, Sir. _

Mal moves on sullenly between the pieces of frozen furniture, the plastic seats, the work-stations, the phoney woodchip panels, the blank hung notice-boards, you had to look real hard to notice the flat screen computers, bloomed screens long burnt out. There was even a water dispenser - long empty.

Tugs another hatch – not a one been locked as yet – guess there was little worth securing here in the in the doldrums of the – what – the marketing department?

_Don't get curious – get the med supplies, get gone_.

Knows full well that Jayne and the rest will want to be playing merry mice around the 'ship' but he has no urge for that kind of capering fun.

_Maybe the Shepherd'll cool 'em some… but the man has a curiosity of his own. That ain't something to find a liking for. Nine crew – and ain't a one easy minded to sing off the same hymn sheet. 'Scuse the expression, Shepherd. _

Shepherd's been off since Candle, maybe sooner. But… that's that. Shepherd had struck Mal, easy forgot – but a Malcolm Reynolds forgetting often meant a flushing of the mind in the widest sense. Forgive and forget meant – forget entirely – move along – nothing to see here – nothing to remember. How many faces in that album? Those Left Ignored.

Inara –

_Uh-uh. See? Real good at just pushing them aside._

Which leaves me where?

Another messy junction of tunnels, another tour through the brainpan-numbing sameness of another open-plan deck - seems likely.

_But sweet tian ah – just can't see it… ship – crew… so – unconnected. No sense at all of anyone looking up at the smooth ceiling, the nothing much walls, looking up and wearing a face, a face like mine, face that tells it open and so to all and sundry – says it clear – I love this Boat. _

_  
Nope, not a one. _

Mal pitied whoever the hell had Captain-ed here.

_Same token, sure am glad Kaylee ain't having to see this. Depress the smile right out of that girl_.

Then again -

_Different token – good thing Wash ain't tagged here… _

_  
"See Mal? Technology. Tech-nol-ogy. THIS is science fiction." _

Is that a shudder, Mal?

...

In the overturned confusion of Serenity – Wash can feel his feet dragging. Not the gravity – nor the struggle to balance on the precarious new ceiling-floors. It's the hiss and whisper and the cold static singing he can hear from up ahead as he navigates toward the cockpit. Those occasional moments where Mal comes through on the comm. sounding angered and riled – or Jayne, amused and insulting - those are the good moments right now.

"Wash! Ta ma duh! Still not hearing you!"

"Blood musta rushed to his head Mal. Ain't got far to go after all. That right, little man?"

_"Correction – no access to transmission from guide craft… stand-by… files on mech-ship restricted, no further requests permitted, systems adapt – looped - switch back – time lapse – no certainty – surfing - probability oceans – recorded – looped – contained – bio containment - bio feedback – feedback – feed -"_

And_ that_ is what Wash can feel his legs protest against.

_"Feed – feed…" _

_..._

"What the hell ruttin' language is this?" Jayne tries scowling at the difficult minded ideograms. Still can't make sense of – "Ain't making a lick of sense to me."

Noakes nods happily. "That'll be Sovean – most like, or Esperarabic… a little Chinurdu maybe. Folk had some crazy languages back in the day – so I hear tell. Language grafts, transplants that never took. Heh, heh. Tongues fell right off."

Jayne turns a slow head. "YOU ain't making a lick of sense neither," he growls.

But Book is nodding –

"One language, One people, One tongue. Never was much of a precedent for it…" It's well known the Lord prefers babble over Babel – no use for a choir sings the same note entire. Well, till now... How long till that fractures? Core talk versus Rim speak, hmm… could go that way.

Noakes is inspecting still – picking out details with an incongruous mining lamp worn round his head.

"Can you read any of this?" Jayne is impatient.

"Not exactly…" Noakes mutters to himself as rubs his neckerchief across the designs, cleaning away the dust that ain't there – mutters with a private voice, a different register – not lost on the Shepherd.

But Jayne's attention is elsewhere…

"This – something about a mouth maybe…" Noakes is gesturing – looking to Book as he does so…

And this is Jayne's moment.

"Hell, Probably just toothpaste."

Noakes and Book share the same expression but it's the Shepherd does the asking

"What makes you say that, Jayne?"

Grinning pleased, Jayne points to one sign among the many.

"Ringing bells for you Preacher?"

"Blue Sun…"

Noakes shrugs ruminatively.

"Well, they have been around some…"

Jayne moves his body, the better to corner the conversation.

"See? So I'm thinking – what you got here – big fancy ship – there's always sponsors. Fat wallet companies get squeezed? They like to make damn sure us ordinary folks ain't left ignorant of it."

"Hot damn…" Noakes breathes an appreciation. "You might be right there, fella. But...it don't help us none though – finding the way."

_Why? Why people always gotta be like that?_

"I'll show you a way, gorram it!"

There was a horrendous noise. The kind created by something large and angry kicking a hole in the wall, then pulling a handful of wiring out. Lights gutter fitfully, and one of the screens burps to startled life.

Book looks at Noakes. The scientist shrugs. Mal grins.

"Well, I reckon real stupidity will beat artificial intelligence any day."

And then the air comes alive with the sound of many tongues, the world all lights and sirens.

_"Hailing all frequencies, hailing all frequencies, this is the Endeavour. No match to co-ordinates found... oxygen running at sixty six point six per cent, biomass reserves calculated for thirty days... emergency triage protocol initiated..."_

The message cycles on, in tongues known and unknown. Noakes punches frantically at the console, as the screen scrolls, giving up its secrets.

The crew lists.

Mal knows those sorts of dates – he's read them often enough – heard them read out – so many times – that dirged recital ringing across waste ground, mud flats, airlock bays, cemeteries, valleys - the calm way of it, a public blankness for the mute and private sorrow.

The howl cut suddenly to silence…

Book frowns, scans again. The dates… the date – singular, cropping up real often – whole batches reeling off with the same damn date. Was it sickness, a virus – was this a military craft, engaged in some conflict lost in the mists around the Earth-that-was?

A dark chill begins to spread through his thinking.

"Captain…"

But Mal has no time, no attention to spare, his focus all on the man muttering and typing, pecking over the keys like a greedy pigeon with grain.

"Noakes - we done here?"

Book shifts his eyes to Noakes – if anything troubles the salvage rat then he hides it well, looking a mite gleeful even. Book's expression is one of distaste.

Noakes appears impervious to that too.

"We got ourselves a route to the engines," the old man chuckles, "yup, plain as day." Bony finger points at a flickering screen, "All we gotta do is follow the yellow lines."

Mal nods – a visible relief.

"Shiny. Best get yourself down there. Jayne – you too."

Jayne signals agreement with a look that says, 'coz you just wouldn't be figuring on the dirt and oily now would ya, Mal? Might get them tight pants soiled.'

Mal looks back.

"Jayne, just...go with Noakes."

"C'mon, boy, time's wastin'"

Jayne grumbles sullenly to heel.

"Shepherd?" Mal sounds weary of asking, half his body already turned to go. "You wanna come play hunt the health pack?"

Still half lost in thought, Book nods.

_What's goin' on in that noggin o' yours, Preacher?_ Mal tries not to wonder.

"Yes… yes, Captain – I'll step with you aways."

Mal is already half out of the data-room and up into an exit pipe.

...

River Tam steps lightly through an open hatch and into the tubing beyond. Despite the EVA cladding her feet tread soft. The toes spread, the sensitive feeling through the insulation feeling through to the floor with every step. Her movements steady. Her eyes blank.

...

It's a truism – and for Zoë a dull one – she'd make a hell of a poker player, that placid face hiding so much. Right now she's shifting from the impatience of waiting to the relief of action and there ain't much of a tell. Mal might see something – they'd relied on each others physical short-hand so much in the past, in the war, but even her husband struggles some. "I love your aura of mystery," he said one time – and only half in fooling. "Let me show you where I hid the bodies," she'd said in reply, and there was no mistaking the invitation on her face at THAT point. Also, there had been the bed – and the sharing of same.

_Imagine it's in much the same state now as back then, _ Zoë contemplates another difficult trek down the tilted corridors, Serenity upside down – not getting any easier to adapt to. Unsettling how alien the familiar gets when you tilt the frame.

_You see – upside down the meaning is reversed, least ways a lotta folk'll read it that way._

Why, Zoë – ain't just corridors you're walking today, you gotta stroll down memory lane all of a sudden?

_That'll be the concussion._ Oh sure.

Memory lane leads to younger days; fresh air of the orchard, the visiting folk in their caravans pitching up on daddy's land. Always got a welcome at least – cool though it might've been. They didn't stay long.

Long enough…

Zoë remembers a stuffy afternoon, long fingered Fates Woman, sat in the back kitchen, soft sighing cards sliding across the table. There's a professionally confidential tone to her voice – the slight gurgle from the woman's ill-used lungs, exhaling an air of clandestine any child would find captivating - even one as contained and wary as Zoë.

"You see – upside down the meaning is reversed, or a lotta folk'll read it that way anyhow."

A card gets turned over: The Wagon.

"But child – that's just the simple way of looking. Anything real, well that's made of the upside and the downside both – just gotta learn the seeing."

_Guess I never did get to that._

Picking her way again through the debris and clutter, watching out careful for light sockets, power hatches – many pitfalls the ceiling had in-built, and most of them half hidden by fallen objects, like – whatever THAT was. Hanging of some kind – Inara's maybe – strung up for decoration. Just a hurdle now, draped over what was passing for floor, concealing all sorts no doubt. And ready to twist and snag underfoot.

_Only, seems to me, you look around – picture's either right or wrong, like now. Situation: This wagon right now, Serenity being upside down, that's just bad – and the meaning? Equals work to be done. That's all. Don't see any complications – matter's just plain unfortunate._

Serenity seems to share that feeling; never much for keeping feelings from the crew the ship gives angry fizzes and worried groans – bursts of angry sparking from newly naked circuitry.

Hopeful that Serenity's openness extends to not hiding the angry under the cloth, Zoë eases herself over the difficult folds of material, hops awkward with booted feet through the hatchway and on to the ladders. These lead to the next level - if her radar ain't got turned around – to Wash and to the devil of a job to do.

And she's still remembering the Fates Woman and the cards.

_Maid of Rifles. Liked that card just fine._

Zoë's folks were fair traditional minded, god fearing. Zoë? Well, that's really asking… but she ain't superstitious. Sure don't believe that a pack of cards'll make you what you are – unless that happens to _be_ a poker player. Don't mean – there can't be a nice glow to the idea that she'd recognised something of herself in the card, the image all illustrated fancy, some nascent ambition to head out into the army life, not out of simple duty and following the family way – but because that was her, who she could be, would be one day and no doubt on that. Maid of Rifles.

Shakes her head – Wash could likely show how the carny old crone's deck was stacked. _ But that's not really the issue, dear…_

Maybe she'd ask him once she found him though, 'cept finding not being so easy just now.

Zoë checks the colour of the walls – never been real obvious but Serenity is colour coded. Colours get warm toward the engine – cool off towards the med-bay, warm again – autumnal – for the galley and colder up on the gun coloured flight deck.

Place she's heading now.

Problem is – emergency lights just colour everything seven shades of dim.

...

Mal and Book meantime are still wandering – stomping through corridors, open cabin areas and even a plastic flowered arboretum. No private quarters yet, nothing recognisable as a bunk.

The magnetised flooring took getting used to – the walkways and passages unravelling in all kinds of crazed directions at angles that seemed to fold back on themselves. Some of the corridors were more like chutes - and opaque, which meant a stomach lurching view through the transparency. _You only know how high up you are when you can see how far down you've been. And vice versa. And backwards. And sideways._

_Look for the centre – the centre - med-bay, if they have one, gotta be someplace easy found…_

_Right. Try that yourself in a three dimensional kaleidoscope come hamster ball like this, watching the lights of your passing winking out one by one above and below._

Standing in yet another twisting corridor, Mal reluctantly pulls the communicator free of the EVA suit,

"Jayne?"

"Yeah?"

"Uh, little perplexed."

"Place like this'll do that to the best an' brightest."

"Even the pretty."

"Speak for yourself there, Mal. Point?"

"Find me a med-bay Jayne…"

"Oh, sure, easy done – and you're doing what?"

"Employing you as I remember."

"Yeah? Well – Yeah? Uh, ok, that's true – you wanna be gettin' all technical about it..."

_Words are vigorous enough but Jayne's sure keeping his pipes quiet – like the Captain come to that. i Why? Seems a strangeness to be whispering. Feels right though too._

"...Noakes says, follow the blue line on the walls. Eerie-ass little lights in it'll show you the way."

"You creeped?"

"Getting to be."

"Yeah well, normal would be me laughing at this point."

"We even remember normal?"

"Don't get your girdle knotted – I ain't aiming for no long weekend here either. Not my hotel of choice."

"That so?"

"I ain't been liking this since the start Mal, sooner done the better."

"So why…?"

"This old bird's got kind've a hungry look – not a sight I find reassuring…Might have to sit on him some, keep him mission minded."

"Shiny. Keep an eye."

_Who'd've thought it? Jayne Cobb the calming influence!_

Jayne was… many things – and most of 'em obnoxious… Still, Mal has learned over the years not to fuss any over a straight play – and the man was a hell of a tracker.

Resuming his own hunt for the med area, Reynolds clicks the comm. back to off.

"So?" Jayne asks – his voice upping again to its familiar register, "that really hooch?"

Noakes flashes the yellow of his teeth, "Sure is!" waving one of the new found bottles at the big man. Big man flashes his pearlies right back.

...

Zoe's relieved to be out of the bay - to have found the flight deck - relieved to see Kaylee wrestling a sparking spagetti of wiring - and glad most to see the Wash... only thing, her husband is making even less sense than usual, and with her head pounding like orbital fire, Zoe just isn't tracking too well.

"Yes, there will be voices on the comm, dear. That's what it's for."

"Not like these." Eyes round.

Fades in and out, hiss and crackle, snatches of words, a few fugitive notes, faint ticking, like fingers tapping, changes to a blare and screech, those same fingers turned to nails down glass, dropping away to a hiss and hum, like the blood music in your ears, when you let loose and drift in the Black...

_"...all frequencies...no match...co-ordinates...running...emergency..." _

The signal hunts.

...

Kaylee has tuned it all out, the misfiring radio, the worry about Simon, Wash and Zoe, blind and deaf to everything but the wiring beneath her fingers.

"…….. Feel the good earth one day, promise you that. Nothin' more honest than soil between a man's toes."

Ain't just the words that come so sudden to her mind – the hefty thump of a hand into her back… Those days glad hands would come outta nowhere and all sides - lift her clean off her feet, pass her around like a prized soft-ball tossed between the boys of a winning team. Women used to mostly fuss over the oil on her chin, the wires in her hair. 'Least she remembers it that way.

"Yeah… man has a right to feel his ground."

Seemed to mean a lot to some – but not to Kaylee.

They mighta lacked for dirt but clustered in space the trailer park was home; the black, the stars, the box-quarters, retching air-con, sputtering generators – the fairy lights all twinkling round the door. "Wired 'em I did – me," she'd tell anyone. "Don't see the need they should be running off the main gen – we got power plenty leakin' out the door, see?" tiny fingers punching stubby at the entrance keypad, words running wild from her trailer-child's tongue, "just ain't a-fish-ent."

Beaming smiles greet the gifted displays – only sometimes they don't – and just who and how and the faces are all long blurred away. "We're all just folk now," Mal had said a hundred times. Hell – folk's all she needs, and the stars maybe – and some oil and wire. That was enough to make a home. Most of the time… and to see that home now lying tattered - in a wreckage too childhood familiar… just a mean ache made to take her breath away.

...

The aseptic purity of the engineering station. It bears little resemblance to the workings of Serenity. Nothing here for Kaylee to be cheered by, just expanses of neat little work-stations. All the canisters are walled away, hidden behind smooth expanses, grey and functional. No human hand ever laid itself upon these engines. Till now.

"...See, this is the reason for the need for robotics." Noakes says, adopting the garrulous tones of a tour guide, his hand on a fast stuck lever. (Jayne, whose experience of robotics is less than benign, takes step back.) Oblivious, the man continues on, the scientist edging ahead of the prospector. "'thout the advances in shielding technologies, a person couldn't set foot beyond those barriers without frying. Melt the flesh right off ya, boil your eyeballs and steam-strip ya carcase like a processed..."

"I'm gettin' the idea." Jayne interrupts.

"Everything has to be controlled from here, remote drones." Pulls at his lip, frowning. "So we need to access the systems."

Struggles with the lever some more, finally slumps, red-faced.

"You wanna make yourself useful, boy?" Heavy sarcasm. Jayne ignores it, sets his hands on the lever. Ain't no machine gonna get the better of Jayne Cobb.

Of a sudden the lever shifts, a row of lights flash up on the face of the slab – a sound of something powering.

"Hot dog!" Noakes hops his delight. "Well - by the bones in my ass and the metal in gums and all the sweet heavenly angels send to plague a man round midnight – I do believe this is gonna work."

"You got kind've an ailment don't yer?" Jayne is sympathetic, "Took my gramps the same way."

For Mal, trusting his instincts is mostly a case of riding that wild pony till the beast done break. But sometimes – sometimes the nail got hit first time and clear on the head. Times such as now. Two long doors of Perspex with the familiar sign of the serpents and a, what exactly? A wand?

_Might take that up with the Tam boy sometime – he's just bound to know…_

Pushes doors open – prying with his fingers. Inside – and after cussing some till the power's up – Mal gives the place a pro's looking over. Ain't but a few moments till locked drawers get open and cases and cupboards yield their supplies – a rich pharmaceutical bounty. If you ignore the expiry dates.

Gorram it!

Just have to hope the essential meds worked, anti-inflammatories, analgesics – things that would cure a concussion. Suture and the kit needed for stitching – antiseptic dressings. But most likely the street price for the booty here'll be minimal – antibiotics won't be but poisons by now, opiates and anti-psychotics just ineffective. Well, maybe the crew can get a little creative with the labels.

What Mal ain't doing is wasting time on the tech – let Noakes do that later, if they could squeeze the chance. Scanners, tools – sure looked like a sophisticated rig but who could say. Not portable? – No use in trying to take it.

Bag filled, Mal gets on the squawk-box to Jayne.

"Yeah?"

"I'm in. Got a bag of what the Doctor would order. Best get it over to the ship but swift. Zoë and the boy'll be needing what's here. Gonna fish around a little more but – if the take seems right, we push on, just holler across - I ain't intending to stick around admiring the decorations."

Jayne in turn don't fuss words, just grunts.

Mal zips the bag and dumps it by the door. Something in the way he slings the sack down – _ain't just the lack of cashy value on this got me sore… What then…? _

_ Only the whole damn day. _

The eyes of Shepherd Book are not blank – but there is something… inward and pre-occupied in their gaze. Malcolm Reynolds has never been fond of distracted companions.

"Something on your mind, Shepherd?"

"Answers – we're not finding any…"

"Not aware we asked any questions – we even need to?"

Book raises his hand – and Mal curses internally. "Oh. Ok, now - why am I feeling that's one too many right there?"

The Shepherd's hand waves a vague circle. "This ship had a reason Captain… but what we're seeing? It's unreasonable."

"It's also not our problem."

"There are no bodies..."

"What, you reckon they was all swept up in the Rapture?" Rough scorn doesn't quite hide the edge of fear. "Folks don't just vanish out of a ship."

"But back in that medical section - was there a morgue?"

Fair question – Preacher don't miss much.

"I ain't noticed a corpse locker." Mal says truthfully. But it's a wasted gambit.

"Mind if I try?" The Shepherd asks in his most reasonable voice.

_Oh, sure – fine, shiny._

"On your own recognisance, like I told Jayne, this ain't a picnic we're about. I'm like to need Noakes if we're to get my ship in the air. In fact – I do believe that's what he should be doing right now…"

"And he is, Captain – man's in engineering., hopes to deactivate the magnetic field. Seem it's me stood spare right now."

"And we can't have that, Preacher."

The sarcasm does not touch Book, nor that oddly inward glance.

"There were people here - real, flesh and blood, the fine and the flawed and all just the same as us. We owe their passing an acknowledgement."

"Preacher – better time, different place, I might agree… but I got a head pounding down the minutes till the only thing passing will be us."

"And I understand that Captain – I'm not looking to interfere here…"

"But?"

"Just give a few minutes – to try and find _something_ of who these people were… some way to respect their end."

_Unreasonable huh?_ /Mal folds his arms. "You got till I'm back with the kit. No longer – and I don't think you're like to find anything, just more of the same gorram office space. You wander into a closet? I'm like to leave you here."

"Of course Captain." Book pulls a face about as convincing as Mal's lie. "Thank you."

Shepherd turns on his heel – moving side wards away down a branching tunnel.

Mal resumes his walking with a certain weight in his steps – boots hammering on the brittle plastic floor, fingers grabbing at his comm. to call for Wash.

_Yep, only the whole damn day._

...

With Mal on his way back with the groceries, Zoe starts the long slow walk back through the ship. She don't like leaving Wash and Kaylee, but she can't do much to help - she's a fair hand with most things, but she knows her limitations, and this techno-tinkering is one of them - so she decides to go check on Simon. And, she realises, with a small guilty pang, River.

Little girl is so quiet half the time, you don't notice her. But now, as Zoe thinks on it, she left the child sitting quiet in the corner of the med-bay, and it is surely not the most reassuring thing for her, world turned upside down, and her brother out cold and bloody.

'Cept there's no River in the med-bay. Well, girl of a certainty knows how to use the comm circuits, and even with the interference, there's still some chatter getting through.

"River...if you can hear me, you have to answer..."

...

She stands before him, strange angel.

He had rounded the corner of the corridor, seeking answers. And there she is.

"You led me out of darkness once before...you can do it again." She can feel the fractures in him. "There are answers on this ship."

What does he seek, this man who holds the robes of the Lamb about him? Is it to keep the world out, or to keep the devil in? So many childhood stories...beware the wolf, little girl. Instead, the wolf should beware man.

Hungry eyes...so much hunger.


	5. Only Connect

_chapter five: Only Connect _

There is hunger in the eyes of Noakes, too – Jayne can see that plain enough… but hunger for what, though?…

_Something we don't want, I'll lay coin on that…_

Cobb stands suspicious behind the crouching man - the old timer feeling the walls, swooping like a vulture as his red edged eyes catch sight of a near invisible seal. _Still ain't stopped yammering to his self…_ Never something to make a man like Jayne feel easy minded. Catches another half sentence as Noakes turns from inspecting the seal. The old coot is beckoning to Jayne to pry the seal apart – but there's no connection with what Cobb hears – and Noakes ain't looking him in the eye neither.

_...called ourselves the Shakespeare Boys…_

"What?" Jayne's question provokes only a scowl.

"What 'what'? – I say something?" Noakes spits. "Gorram ear snoops! Tchah!" waves his fingers as if warding off a sudden cloud of gnats. Truth is he's fending off unexpected memories – the ghosts of times gone.

Looks around again at the gleaming vista around him – hell, no wonder he's reminded of…that he sees...that he hears...

"...and a Shakespeare fan, right?"

"Sure am."

That breaks the hostility of the crowded room around him - a little. Since the formation – the gathering – of those in the development unit, it had been almost a case-study in power-relations, the in-fighting for dominance – the fast and fickle allegiances and the hierarchies, the hates. The Shakespeare group was meant to be a way around that as well as a pressure valve against the Military and those Corporations running with them. More and more and midnight oil or no - seemed everything jumping off the drawing board just made their masters mad – fury was expressed with threats to funding, closure of projects, redundancy… shame.

Unsurprising maybe… this enormous facility hid out on the blue moon of Circe 451 and nick-named Prospero, at first – then simply The Island. Yeah, this was the factory alright, housing all the teams; from Track 1 – practical frontline arms manufacture through to Track 17 (his own) Tech reclamation and on. The man talking to him was Track 23 – Intelligence and Social Prediction. Lastly there was that milk faced bastard Smiler and his kind over at Track 29; Robotics – Miniaturisation - toys.

Yep, all the teams - in one giant complex, under one vast roof; they called it The Hut.

This was way back - before the great divide turned really ugly - and he knew he didn't want purple as his colour.

And they were at least talking to each other now – cross pollinating in a cautious, overly defensive way – but cross pollinating all the same.

"How goes the Globe program?"

The voice of the man from Track 23 was as warm and compelling as his eyes. And he was one of the few scientists here didn't make him feel old.

"Pretty good – should have a self generating environment running real soon – I've based it on those few descriptions I could find."

A seedy laugh as round faced Smiler butts in. "You've been in that thing for weeks! Talk about escapism - we have a bet over at 29. People think you've smuggled a girl into the theatre! Ha, ha, ha!"

Say nothing. Let the floor absorb your anger.

"Should be able to see the first play in a couple of weeks; Coriolanus, one of my favourites. Do, do you have a preference?" Nervous – looks up at the man from 23.

"Oh, well – there are so many. Measure for Measure I suppose – I like the 'difficult' works, they demand something more from the reader."

"Well...I could change it…"

"No, no – I rather like the wait. And I'm sure Coriolanus will be suitably rewarding. _Alone, I did it – boy. _" The man's gaze was becoming uncomfortably penetrating, "Not exactly extolling the virtues of teamwork…"

Nothing to say to that…

… so the words he hears now cannot possibly be coming from him.

_That I receive the general food at first_

_Which you do live upon; and fit it is,_

_Because I am the store-house and the shop_

_Of the whole body… _

And Shepherd Book, so far from Noakes - cannot possibly be hearing those words as they beat against his inner ear.

_I send it through the rivers of your blood… _

_I send it through_

_rivers… _

_blood…_

Then, on a sudden, a voice from the real world, sharp with the irritation that perpetually simmers beneath the surface.

"Shepherd? On your wanderings, you seen a certain little lost lamb?"

"The child is with me, Captain."

Something in his tone don't sit too well to Mal's mind.

"Well, then, you'd both best be heading back."

"We're not quite done here, Captain…" _And there are promises to keep. _

"Don't recall Doc's sister being a part of this."

"Oh, I beg to differ, Captain." Gently, firmly, he turns the ear piece off, "Come, child."

_And miles to go before I sleep..._

...

Noakes has quit muttering – the seal opened and Jayne having dragged him through. No muttering – just a single breathless yell.

"Gone!" It has the quality of a curse. "Every last ruttin' one."

"What?" Jayne looks around the vaulted space. Nothin' but an empty hangar. Ain't that a shiny surprise.

"The big 'bots. The mining kit, the rigs...everything." Noakes kicks the wall, hops a moment. Pauses, foot still in the air. "Unless..."

Jayne sighs, flicks a channel open.

"Mal? We got the usual whole lotta nothin' here."

"We got ourselves another problem." Mal's voice is tense, even by his standards. "River done took it into her head to go visiting. Preacher found her, now he's got a notion to go wandering with the girl."

"To look for what?"

"Dead folk."

"We ain't seen a one." Jayne thinks. "Noakes says all the tech stuff here got dumped..."

"Not dumped. They packed it up and sent it..." Noakes is intent on a screen.

"...so, just maybe the rest of the crew went with it."

"Could be so - but since the Shepherd and the girl ain't taking their calls, we're gonna have to find them on foot, I'm coming back from Serenity for them." Jayne can hear the angry coming over loud and clear. "You better work your way up towards me." Mal adds.

"What do I get out of this, a merit badge?" Jayne grumbles, but he shoulders his gun, paces down the corridor. Li'l Miss Tapped wanderin' off into this hoodoo box was one thing, like as not she'd find herself some imaginary friends to play with, but Shepherd acting crazy was a whole other worry.

...

Something in Serenity's air, or the temperature or the clutter or hell, who knows why but now it's Wash's turn to be busy getting back to where he once belonged...and never wanted to revisit.

"You nervous, Hobe?" That name being just one of the many reasons why.

"Only always."

"That ain't all truth – and you know it. Get you in the air and you cool out but good."

Sat in the corner of the hot and crowded bar, adrenaline and alcohol swirling like smoke. A palace of cheap and easy pleasures, also poker and a natty line in shirts. _Yeah Mal, that was my war_.

Cluster of voices coming back through the drift – like the fragments from the damn radio. Young voices and cocksure – early tour of duty for some and for others a high octane adventure – their faces forming out of the past. Wash has tried so hard to forget all of them – and here they are again, looking through him, eyes hunting for tomorrows headline – and their names underneath. Fame.

"Good fame though," says someone in a drunken slur. "Reporters got that thing – we have, uh…"

"Gravitas…" Wash offers helpfully.

"Yeah – that's right."

"Gravitas boots. We walk tall in 'em – ha ha ha." Jokes – even then – all about the jokes.

"You got that right, buddy." Wash's humour makes no dent on the inebriated guys around him. "You might be hearing Brownies crow a lot 'bout Independence. Only one tribe, and that is," the voice slowing now for emphasis, the man lurches forward across the table, "– that is the photo-journalist."

"Damn straight." The other agrees. Shot glasses kiss together.

"For real?" Wash leans back in the sweaty plastic of the seat, lazy eyelids as he looks at the taut eager faces. "Only I heard you were – you know, in bed with the military."

"Embedded, jackass."

"Inbredded?"

"Why you -"

"Don't let him rile you - Hobe, play nicely now."

"You guys – you're too easy!"

"Can you handle the not so easy?" A new voice – and an interrupting shadow across the table, under the lights and the slow moving fans. Wash looks up – he knows that face, the calm of it and the bleak, eyes that stare further than any belonging to the young-guns haggling for Wash's services, stare clean through today and its attendant heroisms and horrors, beyond tomorrow and on into nothing at all. Every part-time flyer and any reporter worth a damn would recognise that countenance, it has loomed so often from the cortex screen and out of the connex news.

"You must be Mike Paget…"

"Well that's as maybe. What's for certain is I need a skilled pilot, heard you're it."

"It?" Wash cracks his knuckles, "Hell, no IT about, uh, it. I'm the man."

"You up for the job?"

"You see anyone else here called The Only Flyer Good Enough To you Where You Want?"

A nod then and he turns to go - Mike Paget, yeah, Death himself…

And grinning like a gorram _Huo-Tze_, Wash had gone dancing after.

Mike was long gone now, falling burned and blinded from the heavens, in a horror that had left Wash behind wires, throwing shadow puppets on the wall for entertainment...

...just shadows on the wall, is all...

"You think - he's really gonna hurt her?" Kaylee says suddenly. "Not River… Preacher wouldn't do that - would he? I mean being a Shepherd an' all..."

Wash snaps back to the chaos of the now – the upside down, the flickering screens, the cables and tools, Serenity. Wash snaps backs to the chaos of the now – and he can't think of a single reassuring response.

Kaylee tries again, "Got to be a way out don't involve hurting each other..."

Wash looks at her solemnly.

"You mean in here? Or down there?"

...

Dashing through the anonymous maze of empty store rooms and cabins, Book has the oddly passive River by her wrist - dragging her behind him through hatchway after hatchway into the next suite of cubby-holed rooms. He's sure he let go for a moment - an instant in which the girl could have screamed, run, fainted or fallen - but no, she follows after like a sleepwalker, entranced.

"_C'mon now Shepherd_, Book tells himself, _you're still going slow, Reynolds won't be._

_There_ - an alcove, near missed - Book flings the door aside with the manual handle, bundles the girl through, turns and locks it. For a moment the two simply breathe within the darkness, long rasping breaths - and gradually the lights come up and electricity flickers into the cabin.

Cabin - which cabin?

Casting his eyes about, Book can see the familiar objects, the drab fixed furnishings -but there is a difference this time. Maps, papers...

_Radio Room._

"Sit" he commands the Tam girl. She does as instructed while he turns his attention to the wall with the radio. The whole wall is taken up with circuits and junction boxes, trailing wires, ticker tape and headphone cable - so primitive looking. Perhaps an emergency back-up, not linked to a main computer - something therefore that need not be not sleek or portable... _No, too crude still - lash-up looks handmade and the room just feels too private. This was one man's doing... _The force with which plugs have been rammed into sockets, the fossil drips of solder hang from the wires… all the visible evidence of an obsessive but amateur interest. _Lot more than a hobby though... a private obsession – the only personal element glimpsed in this scoured and sterile place… _

Keeping one eye on River - curled as she is now into the cushion, withdrawing into the fluttering of her hair and dress - Book lifts a dangling ear-piece and listens in to it. A swirl of static flashes and rumbles - an electric gurgling… The ship? A planet? The music of the spheres? A long dead relay station - broadcasting nothing now but the radio of ghosts?

Or is there more?

The Shepherd's eyes scan the work-surface beneath him, the many papers - the frantic scribbles on them, desperate looking. The writing cramped and spidery, the letters fused and disordered the spacing wayward and irregular. Loss of oxygen could be… maybe.

Or is there more?

Is this a transcription room of some kind? Had the man here been listening to the Heavens in truth? Had he been listening to God? Had he been talking for Him?

It is always in the lonely places that men think they hear the voice of God. The stark killing purity of the desert, high fastness of rock. Why should the depths of space be different? Sailing that strange sea, remote beyond all human measure, what might a man come to believe?

...

"Captain?"

Mal is clambering out of the EVA suit when he hears the Shepherd's voice. He grabs at his communicator.

"You seeing your way to an ending yet?"

"No, Captain – that is not what I see. I see an opportunity."

"For what now?"

"Redemption of sorts…" The Shepherd is talking to Mal but his attention is on the still figure of River. "And what about you Captain, what do you see?"

_…walls of mud, the grasping fingers of the dead, the tramping of ghosts, lost legion patrols these corridors, the faces of accusation and betrayal as the green tracer fire unpeels the night sky, how many lie in unquiet burial in the shadow of the valley of death, yet I will fear -_

"Nothing. Just what passes for the norm, Shepherd. You think today should be special?"

"Are you even interested in my reasons, Captain?"

"Not much – and I don't see you being so reasonable right now."

"Man needs a purpose, Mal – without one he shrinks a little on the inside… you swing between the Here and the - next Here. Isn't that so? What does that make you?"

"A survivor." _(makes me sound like a gorram hammock) _"But sermons don't motivate me overmuch, Shepherd. Whatever purpose you're thinking on, this is a bad choice."

"I don't see it as a choice, Captain. Just a road I'm walking."

"Paved with good intentions no doubt – sure the Tam girl would agree on that."

"River has always known. She sensed it, connected with the truth of my future. She tried to tell me…"

"Oh, you think? Girl's like to say anything - don't mean it should be listened to. And right now – she'll say what she thinks you want to hear. She's had a fair schooling in that."

"But you're perfectly prepared to use this child yourself..."

"Everyone on my Boat gotta have a use, Preacher..."

"Found that out for myself." Book bites back the taste of his bile. "You really don't have a notion how obscene that was to me…" The Shepherd sees again the church, where he stood at last in the pulpit to preach as he knew he ought – as he was ready now to do. He remembers the church – the empty church, the swathes of sunlight through the windows, the sound of the bell outside, the babble of the townsfolk – the alarm as Mal and the crew carried off their robbery with violence, a bitter lesson for the Shepherd. "Proved myself fair useful, I'd say…"

_He had stood in the silence for a long moment, trying to quell the building rage, to feel the peace that should be his, to find comfort. His head bowed. The bandaged pages of his bible open on the lectern before him. "A child shall -- deliver-- unto you… the Promised Land…"_

"...Wouldn't you agree Captain?"

"Seems I recall you're actually leaving... so..." Mal, forever unrepentant, "Anyway, girl won't be pressured into service - she goes along if she wants, when she can."

_Even if the Doc gets ticklish_. _Which, being him, is a surety._

"I see..."

Book is suddenly less sure of himself. Mal presses the point;

"Yet you're still looking to compel the child... that's a dark road, you go down it, Shepherd."

"Hmm," a thoughtful pause, "I'll take that under advisement, Captain – but River stays with me for now."

_Like hell!_ Mal draws his pistol, heading off again down a corridor. _Done talking_.

...

Haring round a corner, Mal is brought up short by Jayne's glowering form.

"Don't see why you gotta get so fussed up, Mal."

Jayne stands in Reynolds's path – Captain's been moving at a lick, breathing's harsh, there's sweat on his brow and a dark pattern through the crimson of his shirt.

"Fussed about? Got two of my crew in the med, one lost and another panicked dumb. Got a ship needs righting - And a preacher off my boat is holding a gun to the head of a girl... You aim to get in my way, Jayne?"

Cobb braces himself. "Only if you try to go through me, Mal - you ain't thinking clear, gorram it!"

"Get - out - of - my - way. Clear enough?"

Mal makes an unhurried movement forward, Jayne steps back - but his gun is up.

"Well," says Mal, "here we are. Again."

Cobb don't reply to that – he's thinking - never something he enjoys but - _seems like I always gotta be the one... _

"Preacher's a good man."

"Oh you figure that exactly how?" Mal – exasperated.

"Coz he ain't me," Jayne points out slowly, "and he ain't you either. Gorram it Mal - he's a Shepherd!"

"And that makes a difference? Just a man with the drop on one of my crew is all."

"What - so now the crazy girl's crew? Seem to remember how she was cargo - never was too clear on why you had to keep her as a passenger - but _crew?_ " When he gets mad, the veins at Jayne's temple tap like restless fingers at his skull - they are doing it now as he eyeballs the stubborn Captain.

Mal _is_ stubborn – and no slouch himself at eyeballing.

"Not something you're qualified to talk on Jayne - since you tried to sell them out, sell me out..."

Cobb's gun was not wavering.

"Old news Mal - you know it, I know it."

"Oh - and you wouldn't do the same again?"

"The question is why the hump don't _you_ Mal? Making us all on a limb - and, how many jobs untaken on account you got some noble urge... You 'noble' enough to go against the Shepherd?"

Mal's taken aback but hell if he's gonna let Jayne know.

"Shepherd's lost it -Jayne. Preacher's a full-blooded crazy now."

_Gorram! Mal can be so dumb!_

"Who ain't in this place, Mal? You? Me? The ruttin' girl?"

"You -" Mal waves a fist, but is forced to admit, "you have a point there..."

Jayne nods, already forgot what point exactly, but of course he's right.

"So what now," Reynolds is saying, "you got a plan?"

"Nope. Just the 'ain't gonna shoot the Shepherd' part. Well, not right off anyways."

Mal sighs. "You think I haven't tried to reason with him?"

Jayne looks at the frustrated Captain, brow furrowed, pistol in hand, blood red shirt in sweaty disarray.

"You ain't seeming so reasonable right now Mal."

Mal follows Cobb's gaze, looks down at himself. _Oh. _

"Fine. Go do… whatever, yourself," almost a laugh. "Go fix the Preacher, Jayne."

Cobb actually does nothing for a moment - there's still some fire in his eyes. Finally starts moving back down the corridor, keeps his eye and his gun on Reynolds.

"Guess I will at that."

"Jayne?" Mal calls as the man nears the fork at the end. "Not long, that's all you get. And wasting more of my crew on this _go-se_ ain't making me warm to the Shepherd any."

Jayne nods, ducking round the corner and away.

...

...Huntin'. Ever since he was tall enough to tote his grandfather's old rifle. Huntin' is what he's good at. Something about pitting yourself against the cunning of animals - they don't lie or taunt. Man gets to respect 'em, learn from 'em, even. Hell, when you've tracked a wounded wolf over mountains in the dead of winter, tracking a firefly leaking fuel over half a planet ain't no deal.

Still thinks on that wolf sometimes, though he ain't given much to thinking of the past. (Too much to regret, too much he ain't proud of.) Critter was mortal wounded, but it had put up a helluva chase. Folks he was with was all for leaving it - couldn't eat it, an' it was gonna die anyhow, shot through like that. But Jayne...hell, it din't seem right to leave a creature like that to bleed out. So he'd gone after it, given it a clean ending and a grave. Blame foolishness, but...

Something, back of those yellow eyes, something proud and unflinching, even wounded and cornered...reminds him something powerful of Mal.

...

"This is the dark ages!" Wash, all red faced and flummoxed. "Ok – pass me a sword and we'll get down to it, wind feels right and there may be a good pig for supper later. Oh sure, tools, how 'bout my trusty rabbit's foot here. I have some sticks. I could wave 'em around some. People call my sticks the _magic_ sticks. See? See? The waving?"

Kaylee smiles at his stack blowing frustration – truth being she shares much of it, but actually… _Clunk! _Shoving the power-hose home she waits expectant. Wash's eyes are caught by a fast flow of data.

"OK… good! This'll really work! Yeah, this is gonna work… This'll work, right?"

Eyes pleading, he looks to Kaylee.

"Cross my wires hope to fly!" She smiles.

Wash's smile back slips a little, as something sparks, another screen begins to scroll, and the radio begins to swoop and howl.


	6. The World, The Flesh and The Devil

_chapter six: The World, The Flesh and The Devil_

Someone is in pain. He should do something about that, he's a doctor after all...

Breaking through the dark waters of unconsciousness – Simon Tam lets out a long loud gasp for oxygen, pure reflex, no thoughts to confuse the mind for the space of that one life-full breath. He tries to force words through his parched mouth.

"Here," and a straw between cracked lips, blessed coolness. "Don't try talking."

"...mother?"

"Hush, baby," Hand on his brow, "it's gonna be fine..."

Zoe, glad of something positive to do, adjusts the drug-patch on his temple. With what they got, and what Mal brought back, she can improvise. She's done more with less, before.

He looks so young. Man's eyes hidden, it's a boy's face, shadowed with bruises. Reckons that look of youth was never hers; time she was his age, war was about done. Remembers a sergeant his age, though, burning with a cause - same fire in this boy. That's why he and the captain clash; don't either of them like to be taking orders, gotta be the one giving them.

Zoe don't mind orders, don't mind being seen to follow. Truth of life was always more complicated - take her and Mal. He'd been a living banner through the war, and even with the heart ripped out of him, he'd held them alive in that Valley. She owed him for that, they all did, though she hadn't thought to see him again, when she was 'repatriated' from the 'rehabilitation centre' - and then he'd turned up, still in that coat of his and his eyes full of nothing but valley shadow. She'd followed his ragged lead - there weren't no-one else to do it, and when he told her he needed to fly free, well, he needed someone to watch his wings. Yeah, doing him a favour... didn't think too much of where his lead might take her... didn't figure that he might just take her home.

Introduced her to a worrisome man with a dreadful taste in shirts. Next thing she knew, she'd been as lost as the captain and never knew it. If Mal's heart had been broken, then hers had damn near turned to ice... and it didn't seem that no amount of righteous vengeful fire would thaw it out.

It had needed Wash.

As for Mal, he gathered a flock of the broken, the dispossessed. Looks again at the tired face sliding back into sleep. She knows why he keeps these two on board. Ain't to do with anything you could put words to exactly. But it's a little to do with watching kids shot through the lungs, a little to do with sending those same kids out through the wires, a little to do with the way he's always been one to spit at the lightening, to take the road less travelled.

Watched too many kids slip away - death's not taking this one.

...

Mal can see a pool of light, a figure ahead of him in the corridors, but the suit tells him who it is even before he gets within earshot of the cussing.

Noakes is intent on another wall-panel, poking in the guts.

"...darn hard-burn storage crap. You are gonna give yourself up, even if I gotta tunnel through the gorram walls..."

"What'n hell you looking for in there?"

Twitchy, rheumy glance, assessing.

"Still want them central files, the brains of this thing. Should be able to crack this stuff wide open, but everytime I think I'm close, what I want is elsewhere."

"Ain't that just like life." Mal has little sympathy. "We're collecting our strays and heading out. 'Less you want YOUR brains scrambled more'n they are, I'd advise you to be doing the same."

"You aren't a bit curious about this place, are you, Reynolds?"

"All I'm seeing is a whole lot of empty nothing here. Nothing to say who or how or why. Just walls and floors and ceilings. Whoever these folk were, they left here a long time ago. It's a good example to follow."

But what Noakes is following seems to be a logic all his own.

"You're just talking up the 'what', captain, reckon I can lay my hand on the 'where,' see?" His oddly dextrous fingers splay out across the wires. "True enough that this ship of fools was flyin' blind. Destination co-ordinates unknown, the maps were never drawn, and the Endeavour lost..."

"But?"

Mal regrets (too late) triggering the gleam in the old timer's eyes.

"It's the mechanics, the hardware... See? It was sent on ahead. And _that_ ship we can trace. " Slaps a hand, proprietary-like, on the wall. "We got us a point of origin."

"Don't know that a box of drilling rigs is gonna add much to the sum of our knowledge. 'Less we can sell it for scrap." Mal smirks. Noakes glares. It's becoming a familiar dance.

"You got no use for any kind of ideals, have you, Reynolds?"

"Left them behind in a muddy valley long ago," Something cold and dark behind Mal's eyes. "Live in the here and now. LEAVE in the here and now," he adds.

Noakes subsides, knows when not to push; it's a skill he's developed surviving one hard knock boss after another. Truth to tell, he's been noticing a buzzing in his ears, stiffness in his fingers that ain't entirely down to the years.

...

Shepherd Book stands hunched over the desk, in the radio room, in the maze  
of the ship, inside a plastic shell and beneath a crust of stellar debris, the  
dirt of stars. Stands there and tries to make sense of it all.

Thoughts, memories, voices – nagging at his head like the pain he can feel  
from the ship's magnetic field… yes, they would get sick if they dallied too  
long… if they stayed.

_  
"Seems I recall you're actually leaving..." _Mal's words. Yes – Book meant to leave, meant to go. But the 'go where exactly' of his destination – that was just one of so many unanswered questions right now.

_  
Been led along this road, I feel it – so strongly… COULD I be wrong? _

Fingers sifting the frantic notes and scribbles left on the desk, all the  
anonymous ciphers left behind by the radio operator. THEY had gone – the crew  
of this strange place – and the Shepherd can't help but feel bound up in their  
journey somehow.

Haven. The word has haunted him. And holding up a half torn note he reads  
the word - the name – yet again.

All codes and ciphers need a key. Book looks across the room now, through  
the stark light, he looks at the pale features of the girl - he looks at River.

She fears this man. An instinctive terror, small creature hiding from claws in the night.

Backs away as far as she can, "It's not me, it's not me, it's not me," looped like one of the Endeavour's recordings.

"Child – it IS you, has to be." River can feel his affection. His urge to reassure just makes it worse. "Shh…" he is saying, "listen – do you hear?"

"_Tell me!"_

River opens her mouth…

And then the world breaks down – Shepherd Book wonders if his brain has suddenly haemorrhaged – his vision, his sight – reality _slides…_ as if some higher hand just de-tuned the universe. The magnetic field – he tells himself, clutching at his reason… the Endeavour… the girl…

For a moment there is simply the horror of the abyss, vacancy – and then chaos, fragments, the atoms and elements in their ribald play, crashing together, clashing, colliding, cooling and solidifying – one reality wiped away, dissolved and replaced.

There is rain - dashing like earth against the windows, bugs flutter at the screen. A child's laughter momentarily distinct is lost in the trickle of mournful notes - a long forgotten piano lesson fading in turn to a cushioned and ostentatious quiet.

"Why are we here… where is…" Book tries to focus – has to focus. "Where are we River?"

"No place like home."

This room, its owner's imprint stamped in the luxury of the furnishings, the rich carpets, the velvet drapes, the light sensitive blinds, the holo-aquarium with its eternal carp.

The wide desk, the thick glass decanter, the black square picture frames, the wire and plastic of the flat monitor screen, the surveillance camera controls, the security fence.

The cabinets – the cups and medals, the awards and certificates, the man was on display – the man _was_ the display.

Gabriel Tam.

"Have you remembered it River?" he asks, leaning back indulgently in the leather of his seat, there is a precise angle between the rise of his brow and the down turn of his mouth, the retreat of his jowls. River has measured it often. "Well?"

The child's eyes dance for a moment searching for exits, escape routes – rescuers.

"Simon…"

"Don't hide behind your brother River. Not here, not with me. _Tyen shiao duh_ … The Two of you… It's unhealthy. Even he realizes that…"

A pause.

"So? Have you remembered?"

The child meets his gaze. Her nod is dutiful enough, but still - something wilful in the girl's posture.

"Of course," she says. "It was easy… only, only well…it was pretty dull."

An indulgent chuckle, "Well, I'll be sure and tell Mr Frost. He'll be glad of the criticism I don't doubt. Still, you did remember – so why not grace us with a display of your talent, River? You know your mother is so looking forward to the recital – she'll be the envy of every parent there."

The child frowns.

"River? Be a good girl now."

Small 'o' of a mouth, the black button eyes and the hands in a polite position behind her back – where her unseen fingers can be crossed.

"_Go, dumb-born book, tell her that sang me once… … with song upon her lips_

_but sings not out the song…_"

The man in the chair rocks back - a flailing hand, the upturned glass, the warm amber liquid upon the carpet, the man rocks back. River's eyes are steady even as she watches the figure before her rise from the chair to bear down upon her. His face – is that his face? - blurring, her memory, her dream… a rising wind to whip the curtains, roll the upset glass, tug at her clothes, she is six, she is sixteen, she is – she is -

"I don't know - what you want..." River fights to remain lucid in the sudden gale of voices, impressions, memories and dreams blowing through and about her - with a force that draws her up, spins her about then throws her down again.

"Just the truth, child, just the truth - that's all I have ever sought - the truth."

He is on his knees before her now - his earnest voice matched by the clutching of his hands, pulling her fingers into his, pressing the palms together. Book's eyes are wild.

River looks straight into them, through them.

"Did you ever hear the truth before? All those faces, so many voices, so many..." River sounds anguished - she hears those voices, sees those faces, feels...

"Did anyone tell the truth - did they?"

"Some. Eventually" Book half whispers.

He can no longer hold the girl's gaze, can't look at her face - her face –

now rippling and twisting - barely resembles her at all, more like -

"Oh my son, how far you have fallen." The voice is _not_ hers, a voice not meant to be heard again, its sorrow clutching at him now across the years.

"Stop that!"

Shocked, he has a hand up to strike and River leans back, offering her face, her smooth cheek, the pale skin ready for the blow.

A beat.

Book sags. "What - what have I done?" He stumbles backwards, confused, holding his hand out before him as if something foreign, an alien object, ugly. "This - isn't me... I don't... No more..." Gropes for the wall, but there's a new strength in his voice. "No – more," firmly now, resting his hot face against the cool of the wall.

"They've gone." Her voice, small and scared. "I can show you now."

This time, and meekly, he follows her.

...

Jayne reappears with a suddenness makes Noakes yelp, and Mal near swallow his tongue. For a big man, he moves lightly when he wants to.

"Reckon I know which way they've gone." he says.

"Thought you was gonna fix it?" Sarcasm is heavy.

"Oh, I got no problem talking to the Preacher." Jayne grins nastily back. "But someone's gonna hafta catch the li'l crazy, and I ain't going near her after that little knife stunt she pulled."

...

Another room, but larger, more impersonal. Stretching into the shaded distance, industrial shapes, but something age-old and practical in the lines of their design, tapering trapezoids of glass and metal, dulled with something might be age, might be frost.

This is a hollow place, swept clean by time, now. No ghosts to linger. Death had come on gentle feet.

_Nobody has been out this far before. We didn't know, couldn't know...the __silence__. But...I dreamed a voice spoke to me out of the cold dark._

River knows this, how the dark hums and whispers with dreams that are not her own.

These cryogenic chambers bear little resemblance to the box that had moulded itself about her. Iron maiden, cold kiss of sleep-death in every chill embrace. Did they count electric sheep, these dreamers, as the needles took them?

The chill lets the night in, all the unbeing, creeps through the silver pathways into the veins, turns out the lights in the rooms of the memory palace. But memory's thorns snag in her flesh, fish on a line, drawing her further in...

_My name is Legion, for I am become many...eat of my flesh, that you may live...there is no bread and wine here_.

"They weren't given a choice." Fingers touch the coffin. "Held cold in their boxes, no brothers to save them."

Cold logic. In a world turned in upon itself, recycling air and water, nothing could be wasted, nothing _was_ wasted, flesh merely another resource.

This then was the heart of darkness. Endless, empty toil. Service that held no purpose now but itself. Rooms kept clean, air filtered, engines repaired, a long journey into night carrying a cargo of memories. With a dancer's grace, River waves a hand across a wall mounted sensor. The lights come up.

And Book sees at last what has become of the crew of the Endeavour.

...

Some minutes later, Shepherd Book wipes the tears from his cheeks, presses the comm. switch.

"Captain? It's over - I'm... sorry."

"You done?"

"Hardly, captain. I'm just getting started."

"_What?_ "

"But it's nothing you need be concerned about. I found my answers."

"Uh-huh."

"But...would you be kind enough to come down here to talk for a spell? I have something I would like to show you."

"I..."

But Mal is distracted as Jayne clicks the safety on his gun. His look of surprise is lost on Jayne, so instead he asks,

"You trust him?"

Jayne shrugs.

"Hell, I might trust him - but I ain't dumb."

...

Little scratch at the door, and Kaylee's face, pale and wan even without the emergency lighting.

"We can't do nothin' more." she says. "Can see the how of it, but Serenity, well, my girl, she just don't have the grunt." Manages a half-tired grin. "Wash ain't leaving it, though, he reckons he can tap something in the ship circuits."

"My man is nothing if not persistent."

"I guess I just..." Her eyes stray to the doctor. She can fix most anything broken, but not people. But the weight of eyes upon him causes him to stir.

Even the dim lights of Serenity's distorted med-bay are blinding to the weak and blinking eyes. But he sees…

_I… can… see… _

… a face.

"Rrrr-?" He tries to speak.

"Hey!" Kaylee's relief is heavy as an extra blanket – and Simon has been so very, very cold. He's shivering now.

"Welcome back...you ARE back right?" Kaylee looks over at Zoë for reassurance.

Zoë would have made a fine nurse in some ways, and her level gaze is the support Kaylee needs.

Simon is far from sure where BACK is… his own identity is a vague thing… memories are swampy – thick, hard to swallow.

"You want some water, huh?"

Thin trickle from a beaker. "Thank… you."

He's a little warmer now – and that smile from the girl who isn't his sister helps some. His sister… He remembers… River, hopscotch, dark hair a whirl in the grey skied backyard of Osiris – of home… no, not home. But she's beckoning – smiling… beckoning him back… home…

"Really thought you might've got away from me that time," a voice, her voice?

"I said – I'll never leave you – I swear…" His words are barely there, just a tremor of the lips.

But Kaylee's heard – hell she's been waitin' on the hearing so gorram long she's gonna miss it? Her own lips quivering, she leans down, leans in – to finally kiss the mouth been tormenting her these long low months. It's a pure need – and sweeter for that. Kaylee can kiss real gentle when she sets about it.

And Simon would know this – if he hadn't obeyed a different urge himself and passed out clean again. Kaylee gets wise to the fact she's kissing the comatose. With a groan she twists back from the bed, slaps her hips in frustration, turning on Zoë as if the woman has betrayed her somehow.

"It's alright, he's going to be fine." Zoë's reassurances fall flat. "He's sleeping now."

"_Wang-ba dan duh biao-tze!_ Wake him up again!"

...

He had held no fixed notion of just what sort of personal wreckage he was going to find – but the man who waits for him in the doorway is the Book that Mal remembers; dark eyes full of secrets and sorrows, but clear, with a light of purpose. Gestures them in with one small motion.

"I...WE...found my answers, captain."

Mal, cautious, goes to step slow, and is elbowed by Noakes, swift and keen. Jayne holds Book eyeball to eyeball a moment, steps past. Halts, without even a cussword to say.

_Read us the book of the names of the dead...where does the soul reside? Take apart a man, and you will not find its resting place. Render a man down to the constituent chemicals, you will not find that spark of the divine, and yet..._

Whatever this space had once been, now it was...a cathedral, a temple, a shrine. Some trick of the failing gravity moved all sense of direction, leaving only a dislocation as the eyes tried to make sense of the troubling geometries that danced before them.

Spindles of the long bones blossomed from a crown of femurs. Spheres made from rib bones were orbited by moonlets of knuckle-bones, and from deep within each sphere, a reminder of mortality grinned mirthlessly.

_A masque of death. We shall dance our last measure down through time._

_What twisted semblance of the creator's art is this? We are translated, gone before, and what remains is..._

_All their voices whisper in the temple of bone, mark out the passing of time and stars in their courses. Remembrance of time past. memento mori..._

Orrery and ossuary.

And stretched at its foot, in lone supplication, rags and shards, architect and worshipper.

_Forgive us our sins, for we have trespassed into the realms of the unknown..._

_There is only time and darkness. Even the voices are stilled. The flesh was weak indeed; only spirit remains._

A sun. Nine planets and their moons. In this time, this place, it was history and myth.

_There are no words left_.

Mal had seen a deal of haunting sights, but the eerie grace of this machine was one that was gonna stay with him whether he wanted it to, or not.

"He looked into the abyss..." Book says softly.

"Did somethin' look back?" Jayne's sarcasm is refreshing, breaks the spell of that elegant horror.

"Well, I don't reckon this is something other folks need to be seeing." Mal says firmly. A mind functioning beyond madness, working to fulfil this design, the patient work of...how long? Dear Lord, how long had this one being laboured to create this? None of the twisted fervour of the Reavers in this. This was a monument.

"There's folks would pay good money for that installation." Noakes ventures, at last. "Rich Core folk, art collectors."

"A boneyard ain't art!" Surprisingly, it's Jayne.

Now, Jayne will rob the dead - hell, they don't need it no more - but he ain't selling 'em off. Kinda folks that keep bits of other folks around, well, that ain't right in the head.

Kinda folk that would build something like this...

"_...And I who am here dissembled Proffer my deeds to oblivion...let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness...as I am forgotten, And would be forgotten, so I would forget, Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose..."_ The voice is a mere thread of sound. But it is real and human.

River takes an uncertain step from the shadows.

"Dancing in the bone orchard. Strange fruit here, if you dare to reach for it." Shudder/flicker/memory blink of sunlit streets, empty, all empty, not time for this knowledge yet...

Time collapses about her, and she no longer knows how she comes to be here.

It's Mal who catches her as she falls.

...

"You're saying they ate their dead?"

"I don't think they were given a choice, Captain. The ship took them or saved them, according to their importance to the mission."

"We're in some gorram flying cannery, Mal!" Jayne eyes the walls like they might bite him. "Gonna end up sliced up and boiled down."

"You got to be in one of those boxes first." Mal snaps. Truth be told, he ain't cheered by the situation either. "You volunteerin'?"

"Hell, no." But Jayne quiets some.

"Prions." River says softly. (Small gloved hand is tight in Mal's, far side to anybody else. He don't blame her.)

"Say what?"

"Put the wrong things in people's bodies, wrong things in people's minds."

Jayne shrugs.

"Hell, if I woke up and found I'd bin eatin' people soup, reckon I'd go a bit feng le, too." Considers. "Mebbe not so far as this, mind."

Mal tabs his comm unit.

"You made any headway on freeing my boat?"

"Er, some..." Wash is frantically scoping the screens.

"That's not what I need to be hearing..." Ominous edge.

"Oh, we've hacked the system, Mal...it's just..."

"What?"

"It's hacking _back_!"

_I sing the body electric...cognito ergo sum of the parts is greater than the whole... _

The quicksilver surge arcs from screen to screen, jumps between consoles, seeks...

An approximation of humanity, learnt from observation, a distillation of data and experience, Turing's work painted in light. Piecemeal memory, an architecture of fractured data. The ghost in the machine.

Planes and angles come together, all shadows and pixellated fire.

"_I am Endeavour." _Strange harmonics, in a voice that had never issued from a human throat.


End file.
